Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of 'The Single' (Paperback)

Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of 'The Single' By Zoe Strimpel Cover Image

Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of 'The Single' (Paperback)

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Seeking Love in Modern Britain charts the emergence of the modern British single through an account of the dating industry that sprang up to serve men and women. It shows how - amid a period of unprecedented sexual and social change - 'the single' became a key unisex identity and lifestyle.

From around 1970, a growing, cottage-style matchmaking industry in Britain was offering the romantically solo a choice between computer dating firms, such as Dateline or Compudate, introduction agencies and the lonely hearts pages of Private Eye, Time Out and others. Zoe Strimpel reveals how this rapidly expanding landscape of services was catering to a new breed of single people, and how - by the late 1990s - singleness had become the culturally mainstream, wholly expected part of the romantic life cycle that it is today.

Refuting the widespread idea that the Internet invented modern dating, this book uses an eclectic and engaging range of first-person accounts and snapshots from the time to show that the story of contemporary romance, mediated courtship and singleness began in a time long before Tinder.
Zoe Strimpel is Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK. She is a flagship columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, having previously worked as a full-time writer for The Times and Lifestyle Editor for City AM. Dr Strimpel is the author of What the Hell Is He Thinking? All the Questions You Ever Asked About Men Answered (2010) and The Man Diet: One Woman's Quest to End Bad Romance (2012). She has regularly appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC Sunday Morning Live, Sky News, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live, both as a historian of gender and relationships and to discuss responses to the #metoo campaign against sexual harassment.
Product Details ISBN: 9781350099395
ISBN-10: 1350099392
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: March 5th, 2020
Pages: 240
Language: English