Before Depression: The Representation and Culture of the English Malady

‘Before Depression’ is an interdisciplinary project based in English & Creative Writing and funded for three years by the Leverhulme Trust. The project is designed to address the question: ‘what was depression like before it was called depression?’ This involves exploring the development and persistence of the ‘depressive’ state within British culture of the long eighteenth century.

Depression, like other forms of mental illness, has been a much-discussed issue in modern societies. Yet depression as a psychiatric term dates only from the middle years of the nineteenth century, and before this point a wide range of terms was employed to describe the mental and physical experience of lowness of spirits. The focus of the study is primarily literary, though ‘literature’ is defined to include poetry, fiction and drama, and also letters, journals, pamphlets and biographical and autobiographical work. Literary writing affords particularly revealing insight into historical cultures and mentalities, more so when considered alongside material from adjacent fields, here, specifically, the history of medicine and science, social and cultural history and art history. The project undertakes a comparative analysis of representations of a state of mind that permeated a culture.

The project team consists of Professor Allan Ingram (Director), Dr Clark Lawlor, Professor Richard Terry, Professor Stuart Sim and Dr Leigh Wetherall Dickson. Dr. David Walker is a project advisor.

Project activities have included a public lecture series, an international conference, and an art exhibition at the Shipley Gallery, Gateshead. The project has a web-site which gives further information and makes available all the public lectures in the form of podcasts.

Click here to visit the ‘Before Depression’ web-site.

 

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