'Rethinking Therapeutic Reading' uses a combination of literary criticism and experimental psychology to examine the ways in which literature can create therapeutic spaces for personal thinking. It reconsiders the role that serious literary reading might play in the real world, reclaiming literature as a vital tool for dealing with human troubles.Part one of the book analyses the work of four representative authors: Seneca, Montaigne, Wordsworth and George Eliot. Part two sets out the results of a series of three practical reading experiments, particularly concerned with reading Wordsworth and George Eliot. Designed to examine what it is that literature can do to and for modern readers, the experiments provide primary evidence to support the argument that serious literary reading has an important and potentially therapeutic function in modern society.