Worrying · A Literary and Cultural History

*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.Â?? *

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.