Since the work of J. G. A. Pocock, the tension between commerce and virtue has been a prominent analytic framework for understanding the Scottish Enlightenment. A large literature has developed that stresses the tensions in the social and political thought of the period, and places thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson on a spectrum ranging between civic republicanism and commercial liberalism. This chapter reassesses the usefulness of this approach as a lens for interpreting the thought of the period. It does so by focusing on the analysis of corruption and the defence of public service provided by Adam Ferguson. Ferguson is often seen as the foremost Scottish sceptic of commerce, whose analysis of corruption serves as a foil for Hume and Smith’s more optimistic view. However, such readings often fail to consider the fact that Ferguson was broadly favourable towards commerce and had a developed theory of public service and education that he regarded as a suitable palliative for the corruption of eighteenth-century Britain. By grasping this we get a very different view of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attitude to virtue and corruption in a commercial society.

An overview of the book’s argument is provided, followed by summaries of the argument of the succeeding chapters. The post-1945 national practice of economic policy has been about making ‘the economy’ work to deliver jobs and growth of market income. In consequence, policymakers have neglected the social infrastructure underpinning everyday activities and practices which are vital to civilised existence and human well-being. This book is about two key advances: the creation of a networked infrastructure of pipes and cables, and the development of the modern welfare state. Together, they have effectively extended the entitlements of citizenship and added more than 25 years to urban life expectancy.

The EU referendum occasioned a great deal of public, and academic, debate about the proper place of feelings in political life. These broadly divided into two contradictory positions: that feelings should be suppressed in favour of reason and that they should be listened to as authentic reflections of our inner lives. In this introductory chapter, we briefly set these debates in historical context, showing how feelings have previously been conceptualised within British political traditions. We then introduce the Mass Observation Project and explain its particular value in recording (and shaping) the interaction between feeling and thinking in the ways citizens understand their experiences of politics. It allows us to get beyond these normative public narratives and understand how citizens of all political persuasions weighed, deployed, disavowed, and rejected feelings as a source of moral and political legitimacy. The final part of the chapter outlines the structure and the arguments of the book, and its contribution to studying both the specific narratives about the emotional politics of Brexit and the politics of feeling more broadly.

Chapter 2 focuses on the dangers of sleep, exploring how the prescriptions and proscriptions regarding sleeping practices in conduct manuals – especially the strenuous injunctions against daytime sleep – illuminate literary representations of sleep. In Middle English romances, fabliaux, dream visions and drama, untimely sleep is dangerous, with risks to reputation and/or well-being. These genres share their interest in untimely sleep as a mode of admonition, but generic expectations also shape the consequences in distinctive ways. Across these genres, an appetite for sleep, especially when linked to other appetites – for food, for drinking to excess, for sex or sloth – marks a neglect of duties (ranging from chivalric endeavour to Christian labour and prayer), a lack of perception (of right conduct or religious truths) or a lack of vigilance (against attacks or abduction). Moments where characters sink into untimely sleep shape their identities and reputations, offering readers reminders of what not to do, and exempla of the dangers of transgressing expectations.

The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015–2017) and The Alienist (2018–) belong to an expanding group of stylish nineteenth-century-set gothic mystery/crime dramas that variously combine history, fiction, and fantasy. They share common themes connected to class, social change, morality, morality, and gender, especially masculine crisis, but also a particular fascination with the body and the mind. Both are characterised by graphic scenes of violence, death, and disturbingly vivid depictions of human cadavers, alongside exploration and interrogation of troubled minds and tortured souls. Significantly, they are set against a backdrop of social reform and changing attitudes towards scientific progress and innovations in medical practice, The Frankenstein Chronicles during the first half of the century, and The Alienist during its final years. But progress and the pre-eminence of science are frequently problematised as those in pursuit of radical advancement are often morally ambiguous and prone to corruption. This chapter explores the resulting tensions between science, faith, politicians, and agents of the law. Furthermore, it engages with the series’ preoccupation with the nature of monstrosity and morbid spectacles of human vulnerability. It will argue that the body and mind are pivotal in the struggle between competing forces and that both are consistently contested and conflicted.

This final chapter takes a close look at the contribution that Woman’s Way and, once they started publishing in the second half of the decade, Young Woman and Woman’s Choice made to the campaign for women’s rights. Woman’s View, being ideologically non-political, is largely absent from this chapter. The editors of the other three magazines, however, sought to engage their readers, challenging them to become active citizens. Exploring coverage of issues such as working wives, equal pay and access to contraception, this chapter explores how the magazines further subverted traditional understandings of the role of women and their position in society. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that they helped maintain women’s issues between the two ‘waves’ of feminism. In light of Betty Friedan’s assertion that women were uncritical consumers of mainstream magazines, this chapter also considers the extent to which women engaged with the magazines’ campaign for equality and reform. Though not prompting as many responses as other elements of women’s lived experiences, the workplace and reproductive rights are both topics that exercised readers. Of course, the letters we see in the magazines are only snippets of the views held in broader society, but they nonetheless confirm an active readership. The correspondence that not only addressed the editor or staff writers but also fellow readers offers an insight into the complex debates that were happening in society at the time.

A Place to Call Home is a televised serial family drama set in post-WWII Australia (1950s–1960s) that chronicles the lives of the Bligh family from the fictional rural town of Inverness, New South Wales, Australia. A key storyline of the series is that of eldest son James who has returned from England with his new bride while hiding his homosexuality. James ultimately attempts to change his sexual orientation, also called sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), at a private clinic. This chapter critically examines the televisual depiction of James’s SOCE through several lenses that draw upon critical scholarship about melodrama and period drama as media genres for depicting LGBTQ+ histories, studies of post-WWII family and society (e.g., the rise of science/medicine as a cure-all for perceived social ills), and postcolonial theories of race and sexuality (e.g., the propagation of the white European heteronormative family). Depictions of James’s SOCE experience are read through historical accounts of individuals who have survived SOCE to address issues of realism and how televisual frames change how we understand SOCE, specifically how the elements of melodrama are used to accentuate affective and psychological aspects of James’s experience to elicit audience empathy/sympathy and thus social acceptance of homosexuality. The chapter considers the impact that the series could have had on Australia’s same-sex marriage debate and plebiscite that were occurring as James’s storyline was playing out on Australian television.