Soft: A Brief History of Sentimentality

'[An] erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide' -- Literary Review From troubadours to Twitter: a thousand years of feelings, fads and furious sentiment, from renowned essayist Ferdinand Mount. Whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through delightful snapshots, often mischievous storytelling and a masterly command of history. Mount explores the shifting importance societies have placed on empathy for the misfortunes of others. Each seismic moment, Mount argues, from the French Revolution to Civil Rights, has had a corresponding sentimental revolution that has fuelled great political turning points and come to define human civilization. But no one wants to be accused of being sentimental; its detractors call it soppy, effeminate and populist – the stuff of soap operas and pop songs. The Reformation tried to stamp out excessive emotion, the Victorians resolutely maintained their stiff upper lips and no one loathed sentimentality more than the modernists – and yet, today, Mount argues it is not the stoics who are ruling the roost: we are living in an age of emotion. From the Occitan poets of the 12th century to Paul McCartney' songs, and modern debates around woke, this is a witty insight into the story of emotions and the way they have swayed human history.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Unforgivable Sin CHAPTER ONE: The First Sentimental Revolution Inventing Love – Passionate about the Passion – This Vale of Tears – The Power of Soft CHAPTER TWO: The New Stony Age A Lament for Walsingham – The Dowsing Rod – Chilling with Michelangelo CHAPTER THREE: The Second Sentimental Revolution The Man Who Invented Me Too – Love Divine, All Loves Excelling – The Continental Version – The Dawn of Toleration – The Three Scottish Sympathizers – Movers, Shakers and Quakers CHAPTER FOUR: Manliness Rules OK Reacting into Reaction – Women Can Be Manly, Too – The Dry Imperial Eye CHAPTER FIVE: Mr Popular Sentiment The Case of Charles Dickens – Uncle Tom and Aunt Phillis – Victor Hugo, Hélas! CHAPTER SIX: The Great Estranging The Dilemma of The Doctor – On or About December 1910 – The Revolt Against the Masses CHAPTER SEVEN: The Third Sentimental Revolution 1963 and All That – It's a Private Matter – It's a Crime to Discriminate – Murdered for a Song – Tears on the Turf – 6 September 1997 Picture Credits and Permissions Notes Further Reading Acknowledgements Index

About the Author :
Ferdinand Mount was Political Editor of The Spectator and Editor of The Times Literary Supplement. For two years he was head of Margaret Thatcher's think-tank – The Number 10 Policy Unit. He is an authority on politics today, and writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. His most recent titles include Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca and Big Caesars and Little Caesars: How They Rise and How They Fall, from Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson.

Review :
Reads like an elegant love letter to the human heart itself. Mount's canvas is far broader and more densely crowded than is indicated by this brief review. There is much to agree with in the book…Again and again he refutes the doomsters and the naysayers, and does so with good humour, warmth and wit. Mount is absolutely gripping when he writes about the historical backlashes against sentimentalism. Soft is a compassionate, compelling and entertainingly eccentric survey of collective psychology and the madness of crowds. As cultural criticism, Soft is persuasively entertaining. [An] erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide. Highly readable... Splendidly readable...written with his characteristic verve and style, Mount's book...is timely. [A] superb study. [An] erudite, immensely entertaining book… I have seldom read a work of cultural history that made me laugh out loud as frequently as this one did…