The genius, presented for public consumption, was not an entirely new phenomenon. Dickens was as mass market a phenomenon as could be managed with the tools at hand in his era. Oscar Wilde, too, shaped his own image, touring America and having photographs made of himself, as far back as 1882. Wilde is supposed to have announced, upon arrival in America, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” That’s debatable, but he certainly spoke often, if parodically, of his genius, almost as if it were an animal, and wrote, “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
