David Punter, having worked at universities in England, Scotland, Hong Kong and China, is now Professor of English at the University of Bristol. He has published over twenty monographs and edited collections in the Gothic, romantic writing, modern and contemporary writing, and literary theory. His most recent publications include Writing the Passions (2000); Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order (2000); Metaphor (2007); Modernity (2007); Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy (2009); and A New Companion to the Gothic (ed., 2012). He has also published five volumes of poetry.

• Preface; Chapter One: Distinguishing pity; Chapter Two: Pity and terror: the Aristotelian framework; Chapter Three: Pietà; Chapter Four: Shakespeare on pity; Chapter Five: The eighteenth century; Chapter Six: Blake: ‘Pity would be no more …’; Chapter Seven: Aspects of Victoriana; Chapter Eight: Chekhov and Brecht: pity and self-pity; Chapter Nine: ‘War, and the pity of war’: Wilfred Owen, David Jones, Primo Levi; Chapter Ten: Reflections on Algernon Blackwood’s Gothic; Chapter Eleven: Pity’s cold extremities: Jean Rhys and Stevie Smith; Chapter Twelve: Reclaiming the savage night; Chapter Thirteen: ‘Pity the poor immigrant’: pity, diaspora, the colony; Chapter Fourteen: Lyric and pity; After thought: under the dome; Bibliography.