The Emotions in Liberal Writing, C.1790–C.1920

This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of liberalism in Britain during the long nineteenth century by arguing for the importance of its emotional dimensions.

Nineteenth-century liberal thought often aspired to a rational, disinterested and many-sided stance, but focusing on this aspiration has led to the neglect of its treatment of the emotions. Assumptions about the emotional poverty of liberalism and liberal culture have shaped much of the important scholarly work on the nineteenth century over the last two decades, one consequence of which has been limited discussion of liberalism in the history of the emotions, despite its co-emergence with new secular conceptions of the emotions. The principal aim of The emotions in liberal writing is to modify these prevailing notions. Beginning with a substantial, context-setting introduction on liberalism and the emotions, it comprises eleven essays by major scholars on liberal writing in the public sphere, ranging from journalism through imaginative literature and life-writing, to musicology, socio-political commentary and aesthetics. The essays are grouped together in four thematically cognate sections: theoretical perspectives; gender and empire; liberal lives; aesthetics and the senses. As the collection amply demonstrates, the liberal writers working in these fields were deeply concerned with the nature, function and effects of the emotions, as well as often utilising emotional styles and rhetorics themselves.

Taken together, the introductory essay and eleven case studies offer a compelling case for rethinking the place of the emotions in our understanding of British liberal culture over the long nineteenth century.