Sleep and Stress Management in Enlightenment Literature and Poetry

‘Sleep and Stress Management in Enlightenment Literature and Poetry’ argues that the stresses known to disrupt sleep were often associated with unhealthy lifestyles and pressures of fashionable people of the upper classes, with the lower orders thought to be less susceptible to broken sleep because of their healthier modes of living. Highly popular poems such as Dr Edward Baynard’s comical Health, A Poem (1719), and Dr John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem (1744) gave medical lifestyle advice in an entertaining literary form that sugared the pill of dull lifestyle recommendations and treatments.