SOURCE: Copley, Antony. Review of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume II: The Tender Passion, by Peter Gay. History 73, no. 237 (February 1988): 95–97.

In the following review of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume II: The Tender Passion, Copley comments that the volume is impressive for its rich detail, but that it is ultimately unsatisfactory as a work of historical scholarship.

In his first volume [of The Bourgeois Experience] (reviewed ante lxxxi, 1986, pp. 93–95), Peter Gay took sex as his theme, in this his second, love, but as love is defined as ‘the conjunction of concupiscence with affection’ there is overlap and the project is in danger of sprawling around and becoming over long. This is both a deeply impressive and yet dissatisfactory work. There are marvellous cameo portraits of the Victorians. [Volume II: Tender Passion] begins with a description of two Victorian courtships, those of Walter Bagehot and...