The history of loneliness: what we know so far

Loneliness is a complex and embedded problem requiring a plurality of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies to understand and address. Historians of loneliness are uniquely placed to contribute evidence and insight to policymaking, third sector work, and research in non-humanities fields.

Our work suggests that framing loneliness as an ‘epidemic’ or ‘crisis’ is misleading, with significant negative implications for research and intervention. A longer temporal lens allows us to ask more useful questions about what loneliness is, where it comes from, and how it works.

By excavating, interpreting, and contextualising evidence such as correspondence, medical records, literary texts, paintings, and photography, historical research allows us to understand how people in the past recognised, articulated, and responded to loneliness.

In so doing, it shows how and why complicated parts of the picture – such as the organisation of our social lives, processes and mechanisms of exclusion and inequality, and the medical, political, and cultural meanings we attach to loneliness in the present – are the way they are.

Historical practice further evidences loneliness as a deep historical and structural phenomenon, with multiple causes, expressions, and iterations. It demands – and can help underpin – a collective movement beyond superficial and individualised explanations and solutions.

As a vibrant and vital component of wider systems of knowledge on loneliness, historical research and expertise offers a rigorous methodological and theoretical approach capable of, and in many cases best suited for, addressing significant gaps in evidence and understanding.

Readers interested in historical perspectives on loneliness can and should go further than the present document. It assembles a series of case studies synthesising the work of its authors, and aims to provide a useful introduction to the field as it stands; it is not, however, intended to be an end in itself, but a doorway to the body of work it condenses. It is in this body of work, and in dialogue and collaboration with historians of loneliness themselves, that readers will find the most value.

Image credit: A gouty man surrounded by his collection of artefacts, telling his doctor how they keep turning blue; suggesting the man's melancholic loneliness. Coloured lithograph, 1835. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.