Nineteenth-century Britons treasured objects of daily life that had once belonged to their dead. The love of these keepsakes, which included hair, teeth, and other remains, speaks of an intimacy with the body and death, a way of understanding absence through its materials, which is less widely felt today. Deborah Lutz analyzes relic culture as an affirmation that objects held memories and told stories. These practices show a belief in keeping death vitally intertwined with life - not as memento mori but rather as respecting the singularity of unique beings. In a consumer culture in full swing...

The dangerous lover has haunted our culture for over two hundred years; English, American, and European literature is permeated with his erotic presence. "The Dangerous Lover" takes seriously the ubiquity of the brooding romantic hero-his dark past, his remorseful and rebellious exile from comfortable everyday living. Deborah Lutz traces the recent history of this figure, through the melancholy iconoclasm of the Romantics, the lost soul redeemed by love of the Brontes, and the tormented individualism of twentieth-century love narratives. Arguing for this character's central influence not only...

This literary and cultural study explores the practice in nineteenth-century Britain of treasuring objects that had belonged to the dead.