They are Content Creators with Thousands of Adoring Fans - So Why do they Feel so Terrible?

The pursuit of fame for fame’s sake has become almost banal in the attention economy and the strange oppressiveness of collective adulation is becoming far more ubiquitous and insidious.

By Julianna Pillemer

If given the chance to gain thousands of admirers for your work, would you take it? The artists who my colleagues and I interviewed as part of our research on content creators did – and many went on to question whether it was worth it.

Mark, an illustrator with millions of followers, revealed a deep sense of dread about what was once his dream: to make a living creating art and sharing it online. (We used pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people we interviewed.)

“The thing that I got right, that I loved for the longest time and now has almost become the bane of my existence, is creating relatable comics,” he told us. “Now, I’m stuck … I would rather die than make relatable comics, but I’ve built an empire of relatable comics. So what the (heck) am I supposed to do with my life?”

Ironically, the very thing that Mark felt he needed to fulfill his dream – a large, admiring audience for his illustrations – began to feel like a prison. No longer a distant or abstract entity, he now felt inextricably linked to his followers and their reactions to his work.

As an organizational psychologist, I’m convinced that Mark’s existential angst is not unique, nor is it relegated to content creators. Rather, it has profound implications for anyone who cares about the future of work.

Although the strange oppressiveness of collective adulation isn’t new, it is becoming far more ubiquitous – and insidious – in the attention economy.

A ‘chamber of despair’

The pursuit of fame for fame’s sake has become an almost banal pursuit in the attention economy. Content creation is, according to some estimates, a US$300 billion industry. Goldman Sachs projects it to grow to half a trillion dollars within the next few years.

Becoming a content creator has officially elbowed out old standbys like doctor and astronaut as the job that Gen Z and Gen Alpha most aspire to have. Countless online courses now promise to teach the ropes of content creation, while Arizona State University will be offering a new content creation major.

And yet, the realization of this goal often comes with unanticipated psychological costs.

The 54 creators we interviewed as part of our multiyear research project – visual artists and musicians with massive online followings – repeatedly described the unrelenting sense they had of being oppressed or restricted by their audiences, using phrases that involved contorting themselves into two-dimensional versions of themselves.

One artist bemoaned that she had to “flatten and suppress her real self” to engage her audience. An illustrator revealed that she had felt like a “crumpled-up ball of paper” for years. An otherwise chipper cartoonist likened her audience to a “chamber of despair” that nobody else understands.

Over time, we came to think of this condition as “audience entanglement.” It’s a state in which creators become so psychologically intertwined with their followers that the audience begins shaping not just what they make – a phenomenon that has been referred to as “audience capture” – but also the meaning they derive from their work and how they understand themselves.

Audience entanglement plagued creators from all walks of life, regardless of age, gender or nationality. It struck musicians and illustrators, YouTubers and Instagrammers, self-proclaimed anxious wrecks and the freest of spirits. No single personality type or demographic was immune to the experience of a deep enmeshment with one’s audience, and to its profound consequences for their creativity and well-being.

Suffocated by a pressure to perform

Becoming entangled with one’s audience meant that followers’ reactions – whether positive or negative – often started to feel like a burden.

Creators described feeling hypersensitive to how their posts performed, and spending more and more time each day monitoring them.

Then there were the comments. As Selena, an illustrator, put it, a single mean message “would ruin” their week. While they recognized that they needed an audience to do the work they loved, managing it began to feel like a job in and of itself – and not one they signed up for.

At their lowest points, the creators we spoke to were not disrupted merely by the errant hostile comment. They described being unable to take in even the most effusive messages from their audience – the types of affirmations that had initially pushed them to begin creating in the first place.

An adoring audience can be both a reward and a burden. Golden Sikorka/iStock via Getty Images

One wildly successful creator, Maya, recalled receiving direct messages from fans that her art was the only thing getting them through death, divorce and other catastrophic life events. Maya experienced this profoundly positive feedback as being harder to handle than critique:

“I didn’t know how to really hold people’s pain in a meaningful way, and I was also getting really deep criticism – and, in a way, I could almost deal with that better than praise. It’s just a lot for a person to take on.”

As a result, many creators began to view this creative path they had once wanted more than anything as totally unsustainable. There was a tragic irony to this pain. The very thing that made their creative work possible – a large, mostly admiring audience – was also its biggest threat. The audience that allowed them to monetize their creations in the first place had now led to creative paralysis.

Healthy boundaries, intentional engagement

Not everyone we spoke to remained forever imprisoned by their so-called fans. For some, the intense enmeshment they experienced eventually morphed into something healthier.

The creators who shifted toward this dynamic did not stop caring about their audiences. Instead, they learned to develop clear boundaries around audience interactions and clarity on who they wanted to be online – what we called “entanglement management strategies.” By limiting time and energy engaging with the platform, they were able to escape the prison of their fans and once again find meaning and a sense of authenticity online.

As Charlie, an illustrator, explained:

“There is something about hitting this true internal place where, it’s kind of a mystical thing, but some balance between being yourself internally and being yourself externally. There’s some sweet spot there where you know what your audience is and what they expect, and you know where you as a person or creative person overlaps.”

Having spent the better part of two decades researching the psychology of work, I believe that audience entanglement doesn’t just happen to full-time influencers.

The ability to cultivate and manage an online audience has become an essential skill in more traditional professions, like journalism, politics and higher education, with large followings sometimes becoming a prerequisite for, versus a consequence of, success.

Most people will never have a thousand – let alone millions – of followers. But they’ve probably felt some hints of audience entanglement in their relatively banal online lives: the addictive siren’s call of rechecking a post as the “likes” roll in, or an idyllic afternoon with your kid ruined by a snarky comment from an internet stranger.

While countless influencers offer tips for growing online audiences, little training exists for how to actually deal with managing the stress of having large followings.

Previously, only the truly famous – actors, rock stars, pro athletes – were at risk of experiencing the anxiety of public scrutiny.

Now, many of us are just one viral post away from its grasp.

Julianna Pillemer, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, New York University

David Hockney’s Success is a Testament to a Britain that Supported Working Class Artists – the Same Cannot be Said Today

David Hockney working in his London studio in Powis Terrace, Notting Hill. Photograph: Bob Collins, bromide fibre print, 1972. National Portrait Gallery, London. 

By Gregory Salter 

David Hockney was perhaps the most successful and well-known British artist of his lifetime.His exhibitions, from career-spanning shows like David Hockney 25 at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2025) to his groundbreaking touring immersive exhibition David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) (2025), drew thousands of visitors.

David Hockney's 'Portrait of an Artist

(Pool with Two Figures)', 1972 that sold

for $90.3 million at auction in 2018.

His paintings broke sales records. Take his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, which became the most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction after fetching US$90.3 million (£70.3 million) at Christie’s in New York in 2018.

Such success stands in stark contrast to his more humble beginnings. Born in Bradford into a working-class family in 1937, he came of age in a post-war era where access to education and to culture in Britain began to broaden. Through policies and schemes, previously unheard-of opportunities for people of his background began to open up, without which he would not have become the success he is considered today. The situation today for aspiring artists from a similar background is much starker.

A hopeful place for working-class artists

After leaving school at 16, Hockney studied at Bradford School of Art between 1953 and 1957. He had a brief gap of two years working as a hospital orderly due the national service requirement at the time and being a conscientious objector. He then took up a place at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. He benefited from the expansion of universities and art schools in this period, and the availability of means-tested grants for fees and living costs.

In 2026, the affordability of higher education for young people in Britain has been under the spotlight – with warning the situation will get worse, especially for working-class students. More and more students cannot afford to move away to study or take up further education opportunities, as Hockney did. Creative higher education institutions have also seen cuts to funding of around 50%, and it has been proposed that creative degrees will not be covered by the reintroduction of maintenance grants from 2028.

In the early part of his studies at the RCA, Hockney produced paintings like 1960s Going to Be a Queen for Tonight. Such paintings demonstrate the captivating, intoxicating possibilities that the RCA and London more widely offered for a young, gay, working-class artist.

Hockney’s London was accessible and cheap. He lived in a room in Earl’s Court and had about £100 a term from a scholarship. “You could do exactly what you wanted,” he recounted in an interview with the RCA about his time there. “You could even smoke. I remember having to sandpaper off the nicotine stains on my fingers before going to visit the registrar to borrow some money. They couldn’t be seen to be lending to fellows that smoked … Most of us were living on scholarships.”

The escalating cost of living means that for students today maintenance loans often fall short of actual living expenses (like rent and food). Affordability of university is an increasing concern for many and more than two-thirds of full-time students have jobs to help supplement their loans and grants.

At the RCA, Hockney was able to experiment with printmaking for the first time, as the graphics department provided materials for students for free. He quickly flourished in this medium, winning a prize of £100 for an early etching titled, Three Kings and a Queen. For a young artist with no money, this prize was significant. He was able to spend the summer of 1961 not working and afford a plane ticket to New York.

Such desire to experiment would come to define his prolific career as he relentlessly moved between mediums, exploring the possibility of expression through theatrical design, photocollage and eventually digital creation. In 2026, most art students are expected to purchase their own materials so their ability to experiment and discover can be more limited.

Hockney’s trip to New York produced his series of etchings A Rake’s Progress (1961 1963). It was inspired by a print series produced by William Hogarth, published in 1735, that depicts the rise and fall of a young man who inherits wealth then squanders it in 18th-century London.

Hockney adapted Hogarth’s narrative to his own encounter with New York, working in some biographical elements like his decision to dye his hair blonde while he was there. The series is a humorous and earnest reflection on the new possibilities and changes arising for a working-class man from the north of England.

A helping hand

Alongside free education, additional help from prizes and a cheaper cost of living, Hockney’s early career was also supported by the art dealer John Kasmin. Kasmin bought Hockney’s work while he was still at the RCA, and made Hockney part of his stable of artists at his gallery, which opened in London in 1963.

Kasmin helped Hockney sell his paintings to the right kinds of buyers, but also provided him with a steady income and opportunity for further travel to the US. It was in America that he produced the paintings of Los Angeles for which he remains best known. Here, Hockney’s celebrity and market value were managed while allowing him to work as he wished.

My Parents. Tate., CC BY-NC-ND

Hockney’s early experiences are in contrast to the more exploitative flipping of works by young artists by buyers in recent years. There is evidence that this practice, involving buying art by young artists then quickly reselling them for a large profit, has a detrimental effect on young artists’ careers.

Later in Hockney’s career, he made a quiet nod to his working-class roots with My Parents (1977). This double portrait of his mother, posing obediently and affectionately for her son, and his father, leafing through an art book, is not only a moving depiction of family, but also a painting about social mobility.

Amid the celebrations of and tributes to Hockney from politicians and the media, we might recognise the role of class and how it shaped his art, and the structures, particularly state-supported art school education, that made success possible for someone like him.

Gregory Salter, Associate Professor in History of Art, Head of Department, University of Birmingham

Calabria: The revamped Hiking Trail Regenerating an Italian Region Blighted by Mafia Stereotypes

The mountain village called Pentedattilo at the start of the trail. Photograph: Polonio Shutterstock.

By Aurora Moxon 

Il Sentiero dell’Inglese – the Trail of the Englishman – is bringing new hope to Calabria’s Aspromonte mountains in southern Italy, one of the EU’s most marginal and economically depressed areas.The six-day trail is named after the English poet Edward Lear who walked these mountains in the 19th century. The route encourages hikers to challenge preconceptions of the Aspromonte and experience local hospitality, while boosting the economy of an area at risk of abandonment.

The Aspromonte has long been associated with the ’Ndrangheta – Italy’s most powerful mafia. In the 1970-1980s, organised criminals held high-profile kidnapping victims in these mountains, consolidating this association. The most famous of these was Jean Paul Getty III, grandson of the oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty Sr, whose kidnapping inspired the 2017 film All the Money in the World.

As well as researching food, farming and ecotourism in the Aspromonte mountains, my work investigates the negative effects of stereotypes of this area.

Although the ’Ndrangheta is still active in Calabria today, much of its primary activity now takes place in Italy’s north and overseas. Despite this shift, a negative image of the Aspromonte and its inhabitants still prevails among Italians.

It was not the ’Ndrangheta, but mountain brigands (robbers) that Lear feared when he set off on foot through the Aspromonte in 1847.

Best known for his poem The Owl and the Pussycat (1871), among Lear’s other works is Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria. Published in 1852, he wrote about the people of the Aspromonte who shared their houses and food with him, from members of the landowning class to the poorest peasants.

Although he often interpreted his surroundings through a northern European lens, exaggerating the presumed backwardness of the area and its inhabitants, Lear was evidently impressed by this hospitality and Aspromonte’s physical  

Boosting the trail

In 2019, a hiking organisation called La Cooperativa San Leo, based in the village of Bova, opened Il Sentiero dell’Inglese. The trail follows the first 80km of Lear’s journey on old mule tracks with views of the Ionian Sea, Mount Etna and the dramatic valleys and peaks of the Aspromonte.

The cooperative runs a network of local B&B hosts across the seven villages along the route. They offer hikers local cuisine in private homes and no-frills eateries, with accommodation for around €60 a night. Now numbers of tourists from Italy’s north and other parts of Europe are on the rise.

Andrea Laurenzano, president of the cooperative and coordinator of the trail, told me that 2024 saw around 600 hikers walk the sentiero while approximately 1000 hikers completed it in 2025. This year has seen approximately 700 people walk it so far. However, despite Lear’s fundamental role in the trail’s story, hikers from the UK are rare.

The trail is becoming a vital economic artery. Locals with B&Bs can join the hosting network and earn a small income during the low-season (hiking is best avoided in the summer heat). It also provides employment for local guides and brings business to bars, restaurants, shops, museums, artisans and farmers.

Antonio Frangipani, local guide and vice-president of the association that runs the trail, explained that the cooperative’s restaurant in Bova uses organic ingredients such as cheeses from local herders and fruit and vegetables from local farmers.

Finding ways to protect and promote the unique agropastoral culture of this part of the Aspromonte, called the Area Grecanica, is important. Ancient rural know-how and the Greco-Calabro language, which includes words and phrases from ancient Greek, are at risk of dying out as inhabitants move away from the local villages. This movement is part of a wider pattern in Italy of human abandonment of inland regions.

The repercussions of the trail go well beyond the purely economic. Human geographers like Tim Edensor argue that walking has historically forged stereotypes, contributing to the marginalisation of cultures considered “other” from a western viewpoint. The bourgeois Lear and his travels across southern Europe arguably fall into this category.

Local guides, however, believe that hiking is helping to challenge negative associations of the Aspromonte. They say that hikers often arrive with varying degrees of prejudice regarding locals and their way of life, and leave with a new appreciation of the region.

Ugo Sergi, trail host, organic bergamot producer and well-known figure on the local ecotourism scene, described his experience to me: “Many people have come here … believing they would find a dangerous and backward underclass. I have taken great pleasure in helping them understand how they were mistaken.”

Similarly, local guide Stefania Praticò explained: “The Sentiero dell’Inglese has started to remove the stigma as people walk these paths [which] help to show these places in a new way. [The trail] creates this connection, they can understand with their own eyes that the [stories] are different from reality.”

Il Sentiero dell’Inglese is demonstrating that a form of slow tourism adapted to the particular culture and problems faced by locals in the Aspromonte is working to regenerate and rehabilitate a once notorious region of southern Italy. 

Interview: The Body as Architecture, Instinct as Art, Ten Questions with Dancer Evgeny Ganeev

In Berlin, the balletic strength of Evgeny Ganeev is evident in his expressive contemporary dance. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM

A dancer shaped by Russian ballet, Saint Petersburg’s atmospheric beauty and Berlin’s restless creative energy, Evgeny Ganeev moves between dance, fashion and visual art with an instinctive sensibility. His sculptural physicality and fascination with the fleeting nature of performance make him an intriguing figure. Speaking with candour about the forces that have shaped his artistic life, the dancer recounts his experience with Yuima Nakazato, the creative possibilities that emerge encountering fashion and why, for now, he calls Berlin home. Interview by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo 

Evgeny Ganeev had stringent Russian

ballet training from five years old. 

FROM the stony majesty and luminous light of Saint Petersburg to the roiling artistic milieu of Berlin, Evgeny Ganeev has developed an abstract dance language in which the body becomes a finely tuned instrument. 

Trained in the rigorous tradition of Russian ballet, Ganeev has carried the discipline of classical dance into a contemporary practice defined by elongated lines, sculptural movement and an unusually instinctive physicality.

"My artistic path began at the age of five, when I started dancing while also studying violin, piano, music theory, and arts and crafts," Evgeny Ganeev explains. "At the age of nine, after a three-stage selection process, I was accepted into the Vaganova Ballet Academy, where I spent the following ten years of my ballet education. It was an intensely demanding environment where my childhood ended the moment I entered it."

The dancer's evolution from classical ballet to contemporary performance found an important early expression in The Melancholy, the solo he performed at the 2018 Tallinn International Ballet Competition. Selected for the Winners’ Gala alongside established artists, the experience marked a quiet turning point: contemporary dance offered Ganeev not simply another vocabulary of movement, but a different way of existing on stage, one in which the performer could express himself directly rather than inhabit a predetermined role.

"Saint Petersburg is an architecture of atmosphere as much as of stone, I was shaped by its museums, its theatres, and its constant presence of art"

Today, his practice extends far beyond dance. Drawing and painting, photography and film, clay and craftsmanship all exist alongside the body as different forms of the same creative necessity. This openness to other disciplines has also led to collaborations at the intersection of contemporary performance and high fashion, most notably with Japanese designer Yuima Nakazato. For Nakazato’s Glacier collection, Ganeev became part of an intentionally ephemeral performance in which unique garments, movement, ink and the human body converged. The result was less a traditional fashion presentation than a fleeting encounter between sculpture, performance and couture.

There is a particular stillness beneath Ganeev’s physical intensity. His relationship with Saint Petersburg’s melancholy landscape remains an “inner weather”; his Russian training has become an integral part of him, rather than a constraint; and his interest in the fragility of existence places the living body at the centre of his artistic thinking. Even in an increasingly digital culture, he believes there are things technology cannot reproduce: the presence of a living form in space and time, and the immediacy of bodies sharing the same reality.

The dancer's work comes from

instinct, even before thought.

1. What part of dancing gives you the most happiness, and do you find your creative process comes more from the mind or from instinct?

What draws me most to dance is the moment when the body enters a state of heightened presence, where freedom and expression become indistinguishable. In those moments, space itself feels almost tangible.

My work comes mostly from instinct, from something before thought. When I work under direction, the mind becomes important first ~ understanding the intention before I can fully respond physically.

2. What are your memories of growing up in Saint Petersburg, and how did that beautiful city shape your early imagination?

Saint Petersburg is an architecture of atmosphere as much as of stone. I was shaped by its museums, its theatres, and its constant presence of art.

What remains most vivid is its grey, reflective light. There is a quiet melancholy in that landscape that many resist, but I always felt drawn to it. It continues to live within my work as a kind of inner weather.

 3. Russian ballet training is famous for its incredible, intense discipline. What did those early years of rigorous practice teach you about yourself?

Those years taught me resilience too early. In that environment, you either commit fully or you don't continue. It was difficult to separate life and training, and only later did I begin to understand what that intensity leaves behind.

Today, I return to those experiences as echoes. They continue to transform into new meanings over time.

Perhaps the most important lesson was the necessity of sustaining an inner reason to dance ~ one that survives pressure rather than being defined by it. That love remains both fragile and unyielding.

4. In 2018, you performed a solo called The Melancholy at the Tallinn International Ballet Competition. How did preparing for that performance help you grow from a student into a true artist?

At that time, I was no longer a student, yet still young and in a state of transition, shifting from classical ballet towards contemporary performance.

The Melancholy was selected for the Winners' Gala, and I found myself performing alongside established artists. That recognition gave me a quiet sense of confidence in moving forward.

What made that period particularly important was that contemporary dance opened a different way of being on stage for me. Unlike in classical ballet, where you often perform a role, I felt I could express myself more directly as an artist through movement.

The dancer's long, balletic lines are

the result of many years of training. 

5. Why did you ultimately choose dance as your life's work over other forms of art?

I do not think I ever made this one choice.

Dance remains the main focus, but other forms such as drawing and painting have been part of my practice for many years and exist as parallel extensions of the same necessity to create. I also work with photography and film, and I love clay and craftsmanship. There are things I cannot express fully through the body alone.

For now, dance leads simply because the body has its own timeline.

6. Your movement has a beautiful, long, and sculptural line. Did this grace come naturally to you, or is it something you practiced for years to perfect?

It is the result of many years of work, and it is still something that requires constant training. Some periods are more intense, others gentler, but I have been dancing since I was five years old.

7. What is it like to perform dance for a haute couture fashion show like Yuima Nakazato's Glacier collection, and how does performing for a fashion audience compare to a traditional theatre audience?

It was a truly inspiring experience.

The garments existed as unique pieces, so it was not possible to rehearse with them. The performance could only happen once, while Yuima himself worked with ink directly on fabric and skin. It was not a repeatable moment. I love this kind of impermanence.

When the audience entered, I was already in the space, in a slow unfolding on the floor. The main difference from theatre was the closeness ~ people were very near. I remember cameras immediately beginning to photograph what they saw, but I was already in a different state, simply inside the experience.

8. Which specific person or training do you feel has had the most significant impact on your career as an artist, and on you as a person?

It is not possible for me to name a single influence.

Each meaningful collaboration leaves something behind. I am increasingly drawn to encounters with artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. What matters most is the balance between remaining open and staying rooted in one's own path.

Speaking of training, Wayne McGregor's Mind and Movement programme, which I was fortunate to take part in, has indeed had a significant impact on my artistic development.

As a person, my attention is less fixed on individuals and more on art, culture, and nature.

Evgeny Ganeev believes technology

cannot replace living forms of dance.

9. How do you see the future of ballet and contemporary dance in our digital age? Do you believe the raw physicality and emotion of dance can act as a visceral anchor in an increasingly virtual world?

The body remains irreducible.

No technological extension can replace the presence of a living form in space and time. This immediacy ~ the shared reality of being ~ is something that cannot be simulated.

Technology may extend the field of performance, but it does not replace its essence.

I am not deeply driven by digital themes in my own work. I am more interested in the fragility of existence and how the body holds and translates it.

10. Why did you choose Berlin as your home, and does the everyday energy of the city inspire your studio practice today, or does it make it harder?

The decision to move to Berlin was not planned in detail; it happened quite spontaneously. It is a city with a very open and diverse artistic scene that I found attractive.

Its energy is not always easy, but it is alive, and it definitely does not affect my practice negatively. I have met wonderful artists here and built meaningful connections.

I travel a lot for work and I know I will be living somewhere else in the future. But for now, I can call Berlin my home.

See the gallery below of Evgeny Ganeev's choreography. Photographed by Jay Zoo in Berlin.

The Extraordinary Evolution of Reading Fiction, from Moral Vice to Modern Medicine for the Mind, How Attitudes have Changed over Three Centuries

A recent university study found that reading fiction promotes positive emotions, connections with others and personal growth. Painting (above): "The Reader" (La Liseuse) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1770, National Museum of Art, Washington D.C., United States. Cover picture of Stephane Rolland Haute Couture AW26 by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.

By Cleo O'Callaghan Yeoman

Ask someone today why they enjoy reading novels and they will likely say it allows them to escape real life and immerse themselves in a different world. This escapism is seen as positive, but for centuries novel reading was thought to corrupt readers for precisely these reasons.

This year is the UK’s National Year of Reading – a government-led campaign “to help more people (re)discover the joy of reading and make it part of their everyday lives”.

The campaign seeks to reverse declining levels of reading for pleasure, explored in two reports: Children and Young People’s Reading in 2025 and The State of the Nation’s Adult Reading 2024. It does not promote novels exclusively, but they are inevitably a popular choice for many readers.

Beginning from the premise that reading “expands worlds, sharpens minds and fuels creativity”, the campaign echoes ongoing research into the relationship between novel reading and personal wellbeing. For example, a 2023 study carried out at the University of Edinburgh recently showed that reading fiction promotes positive emotions, connection with others and personal growth.

Science writer Rita Matter giving her TEDx talk, Why Reading Matters.

At a time when we are being encouraged to read more, it is striking to consider how attitudes towards novel reading have evolved since the genre began to develop during the 18th century. In Britain, early examples were written by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. But the novel ultimately emerged from an earlier European tradition and was heavily influenced by nonfictional forms, including letters and histories.

Novel reading as guilty pleasure

'The Readers" by French artist

Jacques-Emile Blanche, c.1890. 

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the novel was generally considered low-brow literature, often being described by critics (in some cases seriously and in others more jokingly) as a kind of poison, waste or disease.

Around the turn of the 19th century, the novel’s reputation reached an all-time low. One reason for this was that more novels were being written in Britain than ever before. This was the Romantic period – best remembered today for giving us the novels of Jane Austen, Walter Scott and Mary Shelley, who gave the world Frankenstein.

But it was also a period in which a whole raft of other novels by now-forgotten authors were produced en-masse. Austen alludes to this in Northanger Abbey (1817) when, making fun of the idea that all novels are bad, she refers to “the trash with which the press now groans”.

The number of people reading novels also increased dramatically during these years, meaning that the dangers posed by novels seemed even more threatening. Novel reading was thus a kind of guilty pleasure – people knew that it was disapproved of, but still they indulged – much like fast food or trash TV today.

In the introduction to her 50-volume book The British Novelists in 1810 – one of the earliest attempts to canonise the novel – the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld recognises this tension:

A collection of novels has a better chance of giving pleasure than of commanding respect […] but their leaves are seldom found unopened, and they occupy the parlour and the dressing-room while productions of higher name are often found gathering dust upon the shelf.

But why was novel reading considered so disreputable?

Evolving attitudes

Young Girl Reading (Jeane fille lisant)

by Mary Cassatt, c.1894. 

As Barbauld suggests, novel reading was deemed frivolous and not nearly as valuable a use of time as reading, say, a work of history or moral philosophy, which offered new knowledge and ways of understanding the world.

There was also a concern that novel readers would become so immersed in fiction that they would either no longer be able to distinguish it from real life or neglect their daily duties. In Marriage (1818), a novel by Austen’s Scottish contemporary Susan Ferrier, the heavily satirised housewife Mrs Gaffaw “reads novels” and is therefore “above managing her house”.

Within Romantic-period novels, including those by Austen and Ferrier, numerous examples can be found of readers who become overly absorbed in fiction. The consequences of this are invariably bad – often including sexual misconduct and moral decay – thereby providing warnings to other readers.

Today, a different view is taken. As one young reader cited in a recent article on the wellbeing benefits of reading fiction put it, novels provide an opportunity to “calm down and just get away from the world”. Getting lost in a novel is a good thing – one that allows time for quiet and reflection.

The same message underpins our summer reading lists, such as the one in Condé Nast Traveller magazine, in which the mark of “a great holiday read is its ability to transport and immerse you into a completely different world”.

In this sense, we have come full circle. The escapism that made novel reading so dangerous 200 years ago is now craved by 21st-century readers and hailed as a means of necessary self-regulation. Regardless of personal reading preferences, it is clear that debates on the value of fiction, and how we engage with what we read, remain central to popular culture.

Cleo O'Callaghan Yeoman, Research Associate in Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow

How Tom Stoppard Made Us All Philosophers: ‘It’s Wanting to Know that Makes Us Matter’

British playwright Tom Stoppard assumed his audience was as well read and inquisitive as he was. Photograph/ALAMY

By Fergus Edwards

Tom Stoppard was one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful playwrights of our age. He won his first Tony Award for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1968, and his last for Leopoldstadt in 2023.

Stoppard directing the film adaptation of his play

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1990. 

His life was extraordinary. Born Tomáš Straussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, his Jewish family fled Nazi occupation to India and then England. 

He chose to become a journalist rather than go to university, and became close friends with Nobel Prize winners, presidents – and Mick Jagger.

The wit and intellectual curiosity of Stoppard’s plays was so distinctive that “Stoppardian” entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978. Hermione Lee’s biography of him contains a cartoon with annoyed audience members hissing: “Look at the Jones’s pretending to get all the jokes in a Stoppard play.”

Stoppard just assumed his audience was as well read and inquisitive as he was.

Philosophy is the foundation

As Stoppard said to American theatre critic Mel Gussow in 1974,

most of the propositions I’m interested in have been kidnapped and dressed up by academic philosophy, but they are in fact the kind of proposition that would occur to any intelligent person in his bath.

Philosophy is the foundation of Stoppard’s plays. They cite Aquinas, Aristotle, Ayer, Bentham, Kant, Moore, Plato, Ramsey, Russell, Ryle and Zeno. One philosopher in Stoppard’s radio play Darkside (2013) is never sure if he is spelling Nietzsche correctly.

In 2003, the actor Simon Russell-Beale recalled to a National Theatre audience Stoppard introducing a cast to

2,000 years of philosophy in an hour – it was rather brilliant – just to explain what the debate was and why it was dramatically exciting.

Philosophy – but not before life

Stoppard’s interest in philosophy began in 1968. He wrote to a friend that he was

in a ridiculous philosophy\logic\math kick. I don’t know how I got into it, but you should see me […] following Wittgenstein through Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

The Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) had a philosophy of philosophy. He argued lots of academic philosophy was literal nonsense. Some things we think are important are beyond words.

Stoppard saw theatre similarly, saying in a lecture to Canadian students in 1988 that “theatre is a curious equation in which language is merely one of the components”.

Stoppard as a young playwright in 1972. Clive Barda/Radio Times/Getty Images

Stoppard wrote philosophers who tie themselves into cerebral knots failing to prove what they want to believe about God, morals or consciousness in plays such as Jumpers (1972), Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006) and The Hard Problem (2015).

One of Stoppard’s philosophers dictates a lecture in Jumpers, saying “to begin at the beginning: is God? (To SECRETARY). Leave a space”.

Stoppard’s plays sympathise with this forlorn desire to know until it leads characters to ignore other people. Action in the world is more important than the search for knowledge if there is a marriage to be saved, a dying wife to be cared for, or an adopted child to be found. Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics is complex – but Stoppard’s plays show it in effect.

What we know, and how

In his TV play Professional Foul (1977), Stoppard sent philosophers to a conference in Prague. Scholarly debate was contained by totalitarian censorship. The professor of ethics at Cambridge University makes his call for action by riffing on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we are by no means silent.”

Stoppard also staged lines from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth (1979). Some characters speak English, others use the same words but with different meanings. The audience observes and learns this new nonsense language, laughing at its jokes. They understand the philosophy of language as Wittgenstein did: social conventions between people, not words pinned on things.

What we can know, and how, is crucial to Stoppard’s plays even when the immediate subject matter isn’t philosophy.

It might be quantum physics in Hapgood (1988) or chaos theory in Arcadia (1993); European history in The Coast of Utopia (2002) or contemporary politics in Rock ‘n’ Roll; individual consciousness in The Hard Problem or even whatever we might mean by “love” in The Real Thing (1982). The characters really do want to know. They debate and interrogate but never find definite answers.

As Hannah suggests in Arcadia:

It’s all trivial […] Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in.

But there are jokes too. Arcadia opens in 1809 with a precocious 13-year-old girl asking her dashing 22-year-old tutor: “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?” before the tutor (originally played by a smoldering Rufus Sewell) pauses, and cautiously replies “Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef”.

The audience erupted in laughter. I was one of them.

And as the play draws to a close, a waltz in 1809 happens in the same room as a waltz in the present. As the two dancing couples circle each other, Stoppard’s play suggests that what one person can share with another is more meaningful than justified true belief.

It is a beautiful, theatrical moment. And it is beyond words.

Fergus Edwards, Lecturer in English, University of Tasmania

Six Tech‑Free Ideas from History for Designing Your Garden Without Turning to AI

Claude Monet's garden at Vetheuil in 1881 where he landscaped the terraces that ran down to the Seine and planted the sunflowers and placed his own blue and white pots. His young son stands on the sun-dappled steps. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 

By Camilla Allen

Three gardens at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show found themselves mired in controversy rather than the more usual mud. This year’s show gardens included one designed by Matt Keightley, who has used Spacelift, a design app he developed that incorporates AI. Advocates of such tools praise their potential to democratise garden design and make it more accessible. Critics, however, argue that these technologies risk reproducing or appropriating existing designs, and could ultimately threaten the livelihoods of professional garden designers.

Happily, gardening is an ancient practice and has long been managed and enjoyed without the use of technology. Here are six tech-free lessons from history to help you get started designing your garden without turning to AI.

1. Get back to books

Not sure where to start? A book is still one of the richest sources of guidance, and the history of gardening bestsellers offers a revealing window into changing tastes, practices and traditions.

This list of the 20 most popular titles for American public libraries suggests that food growing, biodiversity and design are key interests for budding gardeners.

Two Girls Reading in Sunlit Garden by Laura Knight (1910). Danum Gallery, Library and Museum

And it’s not just books from today that have something to offer. I’d recommend travelling back to the 17th century with diarist and polymath John Evelyn. His Elysium Britannicum, written in the 1650s, records a deep fascination with nature and design, showing that ingenuity and gardening have long gone hand in hand.

2. Go for a walk and imagine what is possible

The landscape painter and designer William Kent is said to have “leapt the fence and [seen] that all nature was a garden”. This moment is often taken to mark the shift away from the formal aristocratic gardens of the 17th century towards a more naturalistic style.

This philosophical turn helped shape the development of the English landscape garden, but it can also speak to the present moment, when we are being encouraged to make our own gardens – most of which are not landscape-scale – more welcoming to nature.

One of the simplest ways to begin is to look closely at your surroundings: explore your neighbourhood, observe what thrives and take note of what you like and what works well.

3. Consult the genius loci and start with the bones

Old Scott, the Gardener by Robert Lillie (1867). Lillie Art Gallery

Cartoonist Osbert Lancaster and his wife Anne Scott-James lightly ribbed 20th-century suburban gardens in their 1977 book The Pleasure Garden: An Illustrated History of British Gardening. Post-second world war urbanisation gave many more people the opportunity to have their own gardens, reflected in a kind of “consistent inconsistency” of patios, lawns, borders and vegetable plots.

The eclecticism they observed can instead be read as an invitation to consult the genius loci – the “spirit of the place” – and to engage with the features and atmosphere that give a garden its character, rather than treating it as a blank slate.

Indeed, in her 1971 book Down to Earth, Anne Scott-James recognised that most gardeners do not have perfect sites. Working with “the bones” of a garden, she argued, is therefore essential, achieved through creating harmony within the broader context.

4. Follow the rules and put things in perspective

There are plenty of principles and approaches that can be applied to garden design, from formal symmetry and a carefully chosen material palette to planting styles that range from sculpted topiary to naturalistic meadow.

Beginning with an aspiration can help to focus these choices, and looking at what has constituted garden design through the ages through the ages can be a useful way of anchoring your own vision.

5. Visit gardens

In 2027 the National Garden Scheme will be 100 years old. It represents a wonderful continuum of curiosity and conviviality as members of the public gain access to otherwise private gardens.

Lady Barber in Her Rock Garden by Nestor Cambier (1916). The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, CC BY-NC

The scheme was set up by Elsie Wagg, a council member of the Queen’s Nursing Institute and has subsequently evolved into an organisation that funds a range of health charities.

Being able to see what other gardeners have achieved – and the effort that has gone into making those spaces – is one of the most effective tech-free ways of learning. Taking a camera or sketchbook can be a simple way to observe more closely and carry those ideas back into your own garden.

6. Gardening is technology

The Reaper by Ralph Hedley (1900). Pannett Art Gallery, CC BY

When economic historian Roderick Floud turned his attention to the history of gardening in An Economic History of the English Garden (2019), he revealed the scale and long-term economic impact of the sector.

Did you know that many innovations in central heating, water engineering and glasshouse construction have their roots in gardens? It’s a point many people may not be aware of, making it a useful story to share when showing visitors around your dahlias – while also quietly recognising that technology has always been embedded in gardening, even when we don’t immediately see it.

Camilla Allen, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield