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鈥淭here are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul鈥�: Heartbreak, Emotions, and the Body, c.1750–1830

In his short story The Broken Heart, written in England in 1819, the American author Washington Irving avowed, 鈥業 believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love!鈥� So severe was the mental and physical suffering occasioned by the loss of love, he argued, that it represented one of the major 鈥榮trokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul鈥�. For Irving and others, far from being a simple metaphor, dying from heartbreak was a very real physical possibility, as the final, fatal destination of despair.

This paper introduces my AHRC-funded research project After Love, which traces the changing nature, meanings, and significance of romantic heartbreak in Britain over the longue dur茅e. The project approaches romantic heartbreak as a distinct type of extreme grief, analysing it as an 鈥榚motion cluster鈥� comprised of manifold different emotions ranging from shock, anguish and hurt to hopelessness, humiliation and gloom, changing over time, and according to variables such as age, gender, and type of relationship.

After introducing the sources and methodologies for writing a history of heartbreak, the paper focuses particularly upon the case study of the radical writer and philosopher Mary Hays (1759–1843), who was left 鈥榚xquisitely miserable鈥� by a string of romantic failures in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It argues that her experience of heartbreak was predominantly one of loneliness, as her loss made her feel cut off from her sense of self, dislocated from her friends and beliefs, and alienated from life itself. As Irving put it in The Broken Heart, a woman鈥檚 lot was 鈥榯o be wooed and won鈥�, but if unhappy in love, her heart was a 鈥榝ortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate鈥�.

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