Introduction. Compasion (and withholding) / Lauren Berlant -- Compasion / Marjorie Garber -- Much of madness and more of sin: compassion, for Ligeia / Candace Vogler -- Calculating compassion / Kathleen Woodward -- Poor Hetty / Neil Hertz -- Moving pictures: George Eliot and melodrama / Carolyn Williams -- Provoking George Eliot / Mary Ann O'Farrell -- Compassion's compulsion / Lee Edelman -- Cosmetic surgeons of the social: Darwin, Freud, and Wells and the limits of sympathy on The island of Dr. Moreau / Neville Hoad -- Suffering and thinking: the scandal of tone in Eichmann in Jerusalem / Deborah Nelson