A celebrity author from the reform era: Ignác Nagy

Abstract

The study presents the literary activities of a reform-era celebrity, Ignác Nagy, within the newly emerging Hungarian public sphere in the mid-19th century. Nagy consciously switched from writing in German to Hungarian, working in the genres fashionable at the time: theatre, journalism, newspaper editing and fiction writing. He showed the everyday life of Pest-Buda, which was becoming the real capital, in a popular genre of the era, the portrait. He wrote one of the best-selling novels of the 1840s, which he published in sequels – a pioneering innovation. He became a veritable celebrity in the public eye of his time, knowing that one of the conditions of fame was a constant and intense public presence.