A History of Solitude, by David Vincent

Abstract

Social histories tend to take as their subjects activities that people have engaged in together—joint enterprises made possible through shared ways of life, collective ideals, infrastructures and group identities. Work, family, religion, education, sport or political activism all make natural subjects for social history. One of the achievements of David Vincent’s excellent new study is to show that being on one’s own is a social activity too. The ability to pursue a solitary religious vocation, to spend hours on one’s own sewing, reading or doing puzzles, or to choose to live alone, can never be truly autonomous, asocial, atomic. Vincent coins several useful phrases to help him make this point. He calls being mentally detached from society while in the company of others ‘abstracted solitude’. Historically one could imagine a paterfamilias hiding from his family behind the newspaper, or a busy mother engaged in her needlework, trying to ignore the...