How have our social and cultural perceptions of solitude changed across different cultures over the centuries?

In a work that spans 2,500 years these ambitious questions are addressed by around 60 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. They illustrate broad trends and nuances of the social and cultural nature of solitude globally from antiquity to the present, covering a whole range of forms of 'aloneness', both positive and negative, chosen and imposed. These include the experience of healthy solitude and the suffering of loneliness, splendid isolation and alienation, exile and incarceration, meditative silence and oppressive silencing. Individual people grow and learn through both connection and separation, togetherness and individuation, so too do communities. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

Volume Editors
1. Antiquity (800 BC – 500 CE): Aaron J Kachuck, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
2. Middle Ages (500 – 1450): Bronwen Neil, Macquarie University, Australia, and Catherine Rosbrook, Ghent University, Belgium
3. Early Modern Age (1450 – 1700): Andrew Mattison, University of Toledo, USA
4. Eighteenth Century (1700 – 1800): Giovanni Tarantino, University of Florence, Italy
5. Nineteenth Century (1800 – 1900): Catherine Samiei, York St John University, UK, and Julian Stern, Bishop Grosseteste University, UK
6. Modern Age (1900 – present): Peter Scharff Smith, Oslo University, Norway.

The six volumes cover: 1 – Antiquity (500 BCE to 500 CE); 2 – Middle Ages (500 to 1450); 3 – Early Modern Age (1450 to 1700); 4 – Eighteenth Century (1700 to 1800); 5 – Nineteenth Century (1800 to 1900); 6 – Modern Age (1900 to the present).

Themes (and chapter titles) are: creative arts and solitude; religion and solitude; health and solitude; nature, the environment and solitude; work, play and solitude; travel, migration and solitude; punishment and solitude; and emotions and solitude.

The page extent for the pack is approximately 2,112pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index.

The Cultural Histories Series
A Cultural History of Solitude is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access. See www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com for further information or to access content.