This book offers the first multidisciplinary perspective on the formation and practices of fandoms before the term 'fan' was borrowed from the world of sport to describe enthusiastic filmgoers in the 1910s. The focus is on nineteenth-century theatre, opera and literature, where fannish audiences were indispensable participants in the emerging cult of celebrity surrounding actors, opera singers and writers, although their presence was almost obscene and consequently rarely acknowledged in scholarship. Drawing on the insights of Fandom studies, the articles in this volume add the necessary dimension of fannish audiences to the history of the performing arts and literature since at least the eighteenth century, as a counterpart to the development of stage and literary celebrities.

On the other hand, the contributions also broaden the perspective of the flourishing field of Fandom Studies, which has a predilection for fan cultures from the 1960s onwards (and especially for digital fan cultures). Therefore, one of the main questions will be how historical forms of fandom can actually be researched methodologically, e.g. by drawing on historical ethnography. In addition, such an extension of the 'era of the fan' to the two centuries before the 20th century requires a discussion of the semantic fields from which the terminologies for describing fannish behaviour were borrowed before the breakthrough of the term 'fan'.