The making of the modern self

by Dror Wahrman

"Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a radical change occurred in notions of self and personal identity. This was sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history." "Wahrman takes us on a panoramic voyage through English culture in pursuit of the historical origins of modern concepts of identity and self. He demonstrates their transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theater to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. Wahrman describes notions about self in the earlier 1700s - what he terms the "ancien regime of identity"--That seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an a