Definition of "lionism"

(historical)

1. The 19th-century practice of bringing a lion (“an interesting person or object”) into one’s home as entertainment for visitors.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • The practice of "Lionism" originates in some feelings which are very good,—in veneration for intellectual superiority, and gratitude for intellectual gifts; and its form and prevalence are determined by the fact, that literature has reached a larger class, and interested a different order of people from any who formerly shared its advantages. A wise man might, at the time of the invention of printing, have foreseen the age of literary "Lionism," and would probably have smiled at it as a temporary extravagance. […] A man so seriously devoted to an object is not likely to find himself the guest of the coarsest perpetrators of "lionism." He is not likely to accept hospitality on condition of being made a show. But if he should find himself for once placed on a footing with the asseverating gentleman—the immortal Nokes—in the print before us, he will not part with his good humour.

     1832 April, H[arriet] M[artineau], “Art. I.—Heads of the People. The ‘Lion’ of a Party. London, 1839. [...] [book review]”, in The London and Westminster Review, volume XXXII, number II, London: […] C[harles] Reynell, […], pages 262 and 280

   • To define what constitutes "a lion," would be about as easy a task as to describe the colours of a chamelion. The elements of lionism are of necessity evanescent, as they are various. Provided the thing be not common-place and familiar, there is scarcely a particular that will not constitute its owner a lion.

     1837 May, “Human Zoology.—No. II. Lions.”, in Theodore Hook, editor, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, volume L, 2nd part, number CXCVIII, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 177

   • An affray arose from Miss Florida getting into fits at seeing the body of a female infant dwarf, (the Palermo Fairy,) which Lady Garston had bribed the keeper of an anatomical museum to lend her for the night. Lady Merivale, disgusted by this bit of lionism, wished to be off, and looked round for Brandon to order her carriage.

     1839 August, “The Lion of the Coteries”, in William Tait, Christian Isobel Johnstone, editors, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume VI, number LXVIII, Edinburgh: William Tait; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; Dublin: John Cumming, page 495, column 1

   • While other contemporary cultural practices and technological developments, equally reflective of the same historical period, may have done more to shape the future condition of what we habitually describe as 'modern' celebrity, the phenomenon of lionism can be seen as uniquely representative of the heterogeneous, 'transitional' character of an earlier modernity.

     2009, Richard Salmon, “The Physiognomy of the Lion: Encountering Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century”, in Tom Mole, editor, Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750–1850, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, part I (Apparatus), page 60

   • His [Edward Lear's] dislike of the spectacle and practice of lionism, which were so prevalent in the social gatherings and salons of London, meant that he excluded himself from the very places where wider success, fame and fortune were arbitrated and produced.

     2013, Páraic Finnerty, “‘This is the Sort of Fame for which I have Given My Life’: G[eorge] F[rederic] Watts, Edward Lear and Portraits of Fame and Nonsense”, in Charlotte Boyce, ‎Páraic Finnerty, ‎Anne-Marie Millim, Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, page 56

   • At the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, the emergent nature of literary celebrity provoked much anxious debate due to the new phenomenon of ‘lionism’. Labelled after gazing at the lions in the Tower of London, lionism was the practice of having authors at salons and evening parties to be exhibited and shown off.

     2016, John Plunkett, “Celebrity Culture”, in Juliet John, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, part III (Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures), page 540

2. The state of being the lion (see above) of 19th-century hosts.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • In the whirl and giddiness of his lionism, he had contracted debts with the same recklessness as he had done every thing else. But his sense of honour was now galled when these debts were to be paid, and he found himself without money to pay them.

     1847, [George Henry Lewes], “Expiation”, in Ranthorpe, London: Chapman and Hall, […], book III (The Unsuccessful Author), page 118

   • During the last seven or ten years of his life, [William] Wordsworth felt himself to be a recognised lion, in certain considerable London circles, […] Wordsworth took his bit of lionism very quietly, with a smile sardonic rather than triumphant, and certainly got no harm by it, if he got or expected little good.

     1867 January 28 – March 8 (date written), Thomas Carlyle, “Appendix: Reminiscences of Sundry”, in James Anthony Froude, editor, Reminiscences, volume II, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1881, page 338

   • As a matter of fact, the exemplar of lionism belongs to a Society for the Preservation of Egotism; any attack on the lion's traits would meet with peremptory slaughter. His friends surround him and attend to it that he is duly and steadfastly extolled.

     1909 May, Lionel Josaphare, “The Literary Lion”, in The Pacific Monthly: A Magazine of Education and Progress, volume XXI, number 5, Portland, Or.: The Pacific Monthly Company, page 458, column 2

   • [A]ll of his [the Count of Monte Cristo's] Byronism, his "lionism," his use of hashish, his fame as a vampire, his infallibility (as if he were an initiate), his dominion over the heights and depths of society, converges toward an emotion and a dominant form of behavior to which he desires to attribute this providential character: vengeance.

     1995, Antonio Candido, “On Vengeance”, in ‎Howard S[aul] Becker, transl., On Literature and Society, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, page 10

(by extension) The practice of lionizing (“treating a person as a celebrity or someone important”); also, the state of being lionized.  quotations  examples

(pathology) The state of a person having a leonine facies, that is, facial features which resemble those of a lion as a result of some disease, especially a form of leprosy which causes leontiasis (“a medical condition characterized by an overgrowth of the cranial and facial bones”).

(Rastafari) The ideals of Rastafarianism.  quotations  examples

(rare) Alternative letter-case form of Lionism (“the ideals of and membership in the Lions Club”)  quotations