ABSTRACT
At the end of the last century, one Joseph Jacobs wrote a provocative and prophetic article titled ‘The Dying of Death’, in which he describes ‘the practical disappearance of the thought of death as an influence directly bearing upon practical life. There are no skeletons at our feasts nowadays’ (1899:264). In 1955 Geoffrey Gorer proclaimed that death had become the taboo of the twentieth century, confirming Jacobs’ prophecy. By 1979, however, Simpson wryly introduced his English language bibliography with ‘Death is a very badly kept secret; such an unmentionable topic that there are over 650 books now in print asserting that we are ignoring the subject’ (Simpson 1979:vii). His 1987 update adds another 1,700 books subsequently published on death and dying. As we approach the end of the present century, one might wonder whether we are witnessing a revival of death.
