Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewed with suspicion or pity.

Drawing on a wide array of literary and historical sources, David Vincent explores how people have conducted themselves in the absence of company since the late eighteenth century. He argues that the ambivalent nature of solitude became a prominent concern in the modern era. For intellectuals in the romantic age, solitude gave respite to citizens living in ever more complex modern societies. But while the search for solitude was seen as a symptom of modern life, it was also viewed as a dangerous pathology: a perceived renunciation of the world, which could lead to psychological disorder and anti-social behaviour.

Vincent shows how Western society's increasing secularism, urbanization, and prosperity led to the development of new solitary pastimes at the same time as it made increasingly difficult traditional forms of communion with God and with a pristine nature. At the dawn of the digital age, solitude has taken on new meanings, as physical isolation and intense sociability have become possible as never before. With the advent of a so-called 'loneliness epidemic' and the social fallout from COVID-19, a proper historical understanding of the natural human desire to disengage from the world is more important than ever.