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A literary and cultural exploration of worry and the modern mind.

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Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History suggests a unique approach to the inner life and its ordinary pains. Francis O´Gorman charts the emergence of our contemporary idea of worry in the Victorian era and its establishment, after the First World War, as a feature of modernity. For some writers between the Wars, worry was the "disease of the age."

Worrying examines the everyday kind of worry-the fearful, non-pathological, and usually hidden questioning about uncertain futures. It shows worry to be a natural companion in a world where we try to live by reason and believe we have the right to choose, finding in the worrier a peculiarly contemporary sufferer whose mental life is not only exceptionally familiar, but also deeply strange.

Offering an intimately personal account of an all-too-common human experience, and of a word that slips in and out of ordinary conversation so often that it has become invisible in its familiarity, Worrying explores how the modern world has shaped our everyday anxieties.

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Preface to the paperback edition
Preface to the original edition

1. "But woe is me, you are sick of late:" a short history of worry
2. "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange:" managing worry
3. "The time is out of joint:" a long history of worry
4. "Accept distracted thanks:" making the best of worry

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

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It is 4.06 am. Francis O´Gorman is in bed. His partner and three cats lie fast asleep beside him. But he is awake, worrying. So begins this subtle, exploratory, completely original book. John Carey The Sunday Times (Culture Magazine)

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