Examining the popular discourse of nerves and stress, this book provides
a historical account of how ordinary Britons understood, explained and
coped with the pressures and strains of daily life during the twentieth
century. It traces the popular, vernacular discourse of stress,
illuminating not just how stress was known, but the ways in which that
knowledge was produced. Taking a cultural approach, the book focuses on
contemporary popular understandings, revealing continuity of ideas about
work, mental health, status, gender and individual weakness, as well as
the changing socio-economic contexts that enabled stress to become a
ubiquitous condition of everyday life by the end of the century. With
accounts from sufferers, families and colleagues it also offers insight
into self-help literature, the meanings of work and changing dynamics of
domestic life, delivering a complementary perspective to medical
histories of stress.