ABSTRACT
The corollary to degenerationist anxiety in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a series of countervailing reformist and rejuvenating visions, policies and attitudes conveniently called “regeneration.” Central to regeneration was the desire to improve the physical and mental health of the individual and society. William Greenslade, in reporting the widespread anxiety at the health of the British nation in the early twentieth century, observes: “The qualification for membership of the Edwardian nation turned ever more insistently on the evidence of reproductive ‘fitness.’ A policy of social imperialism in response to the crisis began to coalesce around the idea of ‘national efficiency.’” 1 Attitudes to health reform, emigration, empire, socialism, psychology, literature and the role of women reflected efforts to ensure the regeneration of the British race in the midst of anxiety about its decline.
