back to notes

OTW Fannews: Female fandoms old and new

The Observer ran a long, in-depth piece by Dorian Lynskey about Beatlemania specifically, but also how female music fandoms have ever been thus. The term 'mania' was "first applied to fandom in 1844 when German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine coined the word Lisztomania to describe the 'true madness, unheard of in the annals of furore' that broke out at concerts by the piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. The word had medical resonances and Heine considered various possible causes of the uproar, from the biological to the political, before deciding, prosaically, that it was probably just down to Liszt's exceptional talent, charisma and showmanship."