The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-century British Literature and Culture (The Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture) - Tapa dura

This book investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century, arguing that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. Because this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure's importance to class status, idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women is figured, and she examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness.