Literary mentions of silence fell steadily from 1810 to 1960

Evidence

Of all descriptions in our file for the decades 1810–30, 19 percent mention quiet or silence; by 1870–90 mentions had dropped to 14 percent, and by 1940–60 to 9 percent. Thus it would appear that while writers are not consciously perceptive of the accumulation of technological sounds, at an unconscious level they are noticing the disappearance of quiet and silence. — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 477

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the silence-desire thread and the decline of natural sounds (48% to 28% in Britain). — connects to: Literary evocations of quiet halved across two centuries — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 477
• SEED: A concrete data series for an essay on how literature tracks acoustic change.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 477