The Tender Passion looks at the Victorian middle classes' ideal and real notions of love. It explores an anxiety-provoking time when the boundaries between erotic expressiveness and reserve began to give way, changing the experience of love. "One of the major historical enterprises of the decade. . . . An enterprise requiring a daring and breadth of knowledge possessed by few other contemporary historians."―Gordon A. Craig, New York Review of Books "Gay's writing has an artist's feel for the flow and rhythms of language, and his extensive and exquisitely managed research is blended into a unified structure that consistently serves the author's purpose."― San Francisco Chronicle "The vicissitudes of the 'tender passion' in both the fiction and the real lives of the Victorians is an enthralling subject."―Anthony Storr, The Spectator One of the major historical enterprises of the decade. . . . A grand investigation of the bourgeois experience and consciousness in the nineteenth century, an enterprise requiring a daring and breadth of knowledge possessed by few other contemporary historians, and one which [Peter Gay] has carried to its term with inexhaustible energy and patience and an exuberance of spirit. -- Gordon A. Craig, New York Review of Books Peter Gay (1923―2015) was the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner The Enlightenment , the best-selling Weimar Culture , and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time .