Читать книгу A History of Solitude - David Vincent, Дэвид Винсент - Страница 6

This book, as with any other historical enterprise, is the product of lone endeavour and collective support. I am particularly grateful to Barbara Taylor, both for the funded network she has established on the history of solitude and for sharing her own knowledge and expertise. Her forthcoming study of the subject in the early-modern era will be a necessary complement to this exercise. The ‘Pathologies of Solitude’ seminars have been a useful location for testing the ideas and conclusions of my work. John Naughton has supplied networked support through the projects of the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. I thank him for his encouragement and hospitality, as well as his unrivalled expertise on the digital revolution and its implications. The visiting fellows at CRASSH have been a source of debate and information. Colleagues at the Open University have read and commented on draft chapters and made available their specialized knowledge, with particular thanks to Amanda Goodrich, Ros Crone, and John Wolffe. I have benefited from discussions with Patrick Joyce, Leslie Howsam, Kathryn Hughes, and Isabel Rivers. Andrew Mackenzie-McHarg and Anne Vila helped me understand Johann Zimmermann and his writings. Claudia Hammond lent me material from her impressive BBC/Welcome Trust collaborations. The progress of this project has been discussed in the generous company of Brenda and James Gourley, and Seija and Graham Tattersall. Charlotte Vincent, as so often over so many years, has been a sustaining critic, arguing through the book’s ideas, supporting its labour and reading every word for accurate expression. At Polity, Pascal Porcheron’s persistent enthusiasm for this project has much to do with its completion. The care given by Justin Dyer to the preparation of this text has been exemplary.

This book has been researched in the deep quiet of the rare books rooms in the British Library and the Cambridge University Library, and I thank their staff for their patience and efficiency. As the project was commencing one Armistice Day, the public address system in the latter’s Rare Books Room made the oddly unfeasible request of its readers that they observe a silence for the fallen. Even in the depths of a library, solitude has to be managed.

The book was written in a converted pigsty in my garden. It is twenty steps from my desk to my house, from my own company to that of my wife and the intermittent presence of children, grandchildren and friends. To be able to make that journey from one location to the other, from productive solitude to the most profound sociability, is the privilege of my life.

A History of Solitude is dedicated to Veronica Weedon née More, to whom I had the good fortune of being related by marriage. After an eventful war-service, which included work at Bletchley Park, she married and had a family, but was early widowed. Her subsequent life throughout nearly six decades, latterly in a mountain village in Majorca, was an exemplary demonstration of how to maintain a balance between her own company and a wide range of family, friends, and outside interests. She was a great reader, and in turn the author of four books, the first published when she was eighty-five. I hope she would have enjoyed this one.

Shrawardine, autumn 2019