Soft: A Brief History of Sentimentality

A sweeping history of emotion that spans the decades, from renowned author Ferdinand Mount.

In this day and age, 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 vivid snapshots, masterly storytelling and bizarre historical anecdotes.

Revealing all the weird and wonderful ways people in the past expressed their grief and joy, 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 these great political turning points.

But during this long history, powerful feelings have frequently come under attack. 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, it is not the stoics who are ruling the roost: we are living in an age of emotion.

This is a witty, pacey story of the understanding of emotions and the way they have swayed civilisation.