T. Underwood 
The Work of the Sun 
Literature, Science, and Political Economy, 1760–1860

At the end of the Eighteenth century, British writers began to celebrate work in a strangely indirect way. Instead of describing diligence as an attribute of character, poets and novelists increasingly identified work with impersonal ‘energies’ akin to natural force. Chemists traced mental and muscular work back to its source in sunlight, giving rise to the claim (beloved by Nineteenth-century journalists) that ‘all the labour done under the sun is really done by it’. The Work of The Sun traces the emergence of this model of work, exploring its sources in middle-class consciousness and its implications for British literature and science.

Table of Content

Introduction Romanticism and the Science of Light Energy and the Autonomy of Middle-Class Work Apollo, God of Middle-Class Enterprise Cowper’s Spontaneous Task A Homeless Voice of Waters: Industrial and Imaginative Power in Wordsworth Sunlight and the Reification of Culture Productivism and the Reception of ‘The Conservation of Force’

About the author

TED UNDERWOOD is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.