This book breaks important new ground in helping us understand a complex, multi-faceted subject. The author contends that loneliness is a modern emotion, for which framing language has only emerged in the last 200 years. She illustrates differing presentations of this ‘emotion cluster’ depicted in letters, fiction, biographies and philosophy. The book examines challenges triggered by ageing, bereavement, social media, homelessness and unpaid caring. It is essential reading for anyone who, from whatever perspective, wants to reflect on this social challenge and act more effectively to engage with it.

Bound Alberti sets a historical context to the language of loneliness. Her thesis is that with the industrialisation of modern society and advent of prevailing neoliberalist philosophies, there developed an increasing focus on the individual as opposed to the collective. In a world of declining religious affiliation, people felt gradually more remote from each other and less comfort from their environment. ‘Loneliness’ as a term, prior to its modern interpretation, denoted simply the objective state of being alone (‘oneliness’). ‘Solitude’, a common term in philosophy and literature, was often portrayed as a valuable, important experience, enabling withdrawal from and wiser reflection about the world. The modern age, particularly with urbanisation and its consequent mass anonymisation, created a specific form of alienation we call loneliness. Bound Alberti rightly recognises the contribution made by the writer Olivia Laing (Reference Laing2016) in showing that loneliness is not always negative. It can generate an energetic charge which can enable us to view the world with creativity and wisdom. Bound Alberti also claims that terminology such as ‘the epidemic’ of loneliness has dramatised and pathologised this subject, helping create a ‘moral panic’.

The author selects several illuminating presentations of the emotion. Chapter 2 focuses on the tortured life of Sylvia Plath, documenting how loneliness ‘shadowed her life’ as she sought both to stand out from others as a great writer and yet at the same time to belong, in a continuing emotional partnership. The markedly different stories of Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and of Bella and Edward in the Twilight books of Stephenie Meyer (Chapter 3), explore the ideal of the romantic soulmate without whom life is drastically impoverished. This leads naturally (Chapter 4) to an examination of widow(er)hood in which Bound Alberti contrasts the bereavement of 18th-century trader Thomas Turner with that of Queen Victoria. Bound Alberti adduces Turner's relative composure in loss, whose lexicon never includes the word loneliness, alongside Victoria's chronic sadness (her journals naming the state of being lonely on 62 occasions) as consistent with her argument that the language of loneliness has only emerged in the last two centuries.

Bound Alberti gives a helpful balancing view to current controversies about new communications technologies (Chapter 5), asserting that social media has the potential to bridge the gap between physical and mental worlds: technology is neither good nor bad, it is how we use it to build on physical methods of communication that matters, and this potential should benefit older people as well as millennials. Indeed, a central part of the book (Chapter 6) is a moving portrayal of loneliness in older age, where the formal care of people like the author's grandmother (‘not cruel, but indifferent’, p. 139) does little to address the increasing risk of loneliness in later life.

Loneliness overlaps with a complex set of issues, including how we care for greater numbers of older people, age discrimination and the impact of poverty. Bound Alberti also chooses to cover in some detail (Chapter 7) those who are homeless, as one example of a marginalised social group, to illustrate the need for a nuanced approach; in many different contexts one is more likely to be lonely yet less likely to have resources to overcome that state, from homelessness to family caring to people who have lost a loved one, and so on.

I had two debating points with this excellent book. First, the notion that loneliness is a modern emotion sits oddly with the well-evidenced (and in this book referenced) claim of evolutionary biologists such as the late, much-lamented Professor John Cacioppo (Reference Cacioppo2008) that loneliness is a hunger, a deep-seated instinct within us to connect with the tribe. Surely the ache has always been there, but like many emotions the response to it in language is more recent? Second, Bound Alberti frequently uses the word ‘panic’ to characterise the current popular response to loneliness, implying a degree of irrational or exaggerated reaction to the situation. However, the evidence is that the feeling of a painful gap between the contact you have and the contact you crave is a common and serious blight on many lives, perhaps a part of our universal human condition. That we have started in the United Kingdom to grapple with this challenge, with alarm, energy and action by many players, should not merit a reaction to downplay or relegate it in the hierarchy of social concerns. But let's not panic about it!