"Victorian Pain provides a needed example of the rewards of philosophically informed literary criticism, one that should encourage other scholars and students to greater ambition and independence of thought. Finding intellectual inspiration in unusual places, Ablow has crafted a convincing and widely resonant argument."--Andrew H. Miller, author of The Burdens of Perfection: On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
"Breathtakingly original. Victorian Pain is erudite, vastly informed, yet utterly readable."--Adela Pinch, author of Thinking about Other People in Nineteenth-Century British Writing