.,." engaging, humane, deftly phrased, and freshly observant...shows a seasoned literary critic at work on a fascinating problem exemplified in an array of imaginative and documentary texts."
--Herbert Frederick Tucker
University of Virginia
What is the difference between public and private feeling, and how far can we deduce past feelings from the words that have been left us? Why do child deaths figure so often and so prominently in the literature of the nineteenth century, and how was the theme of the death of a child used to elicit such poignant responses in the readers of that era? In this fascinating new book, Laurence Lerner vividly contrasts the contempt with which twentieth-century criticism so often dismisses such works as mere sentimentality with the enthusiasm and tears of nineteenth-century contemporaries.
