The word “invalid” can mean weak and sickly or null and void. With a neat turn of these definitions, Maria H. Frawley posits that the concept of invalid in nineteenth-century Britain connoted activity as much as passivity, a positive as much as a negative role. In developing this thesis, she not only rescues invalidism from marginalization but also postulates its prioritization among identity genres.

As the book correctly and repeatedly points out, invalids were not homogeneous. Although they shared a category in a society that relied on categorization for stability, they adopted different responses to and accepted different counsels about their conditions. By reviewing a variety of sources, Frawley shows how their own writings and the words directed to them discredit the construct of dependency customarily associated with invalids. Indeed, the book underlines how their very attempt to understand their situation was itself a contradiction of their supposed inability to cope. Any tactics to accommodate to, much less to alter their circumstances were even more proof that stasis was not synonymous with stagnancy.

The study draws on confessional and consolation texts and those on the travel and the psyche of invalids. Some works were penned by the well known, such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Harriet Martineau; others, by the less famous, among them M. Giles and Elizabeth Squirrel. Frawley moves with ease from poetry to periodicals, from autobiography to advisory to weave her narrative. This style does not interfere with close content analyses of samples. Whether examining hymnbooks or tourist guides, penetrating essays or humorous sketches, she demonstrates with sophistication the nuances that link yet divide these sources and calls attention to their intersection with other classifications, especially of gender and class. These assessments are even more valuable insofar as they highlight the tension between being unwell and dealing with unwellness, between the community of sufferers and the isolated individual.

Frawley is careful to relate her findings to recent historiography and to anchor them in both historical and literary contexts, including the Evangelical revival, the influence of a work ethic, and the professionalization of medicine. Equally important, she recognizes the limitations of the material, among them the possibilities for hypochondria, self-indulgence, and irresponsible advice. She is somewhat less clear about the effect of time, notably by failing to distinguish in depth between reactions to long-term unhealthiness and to short-term convalescence.

With apparent logic, the primary goal of many invalids was to comprehend their circumstances and how to adapt to them. The book describes the roads that invalids took to reach these ends and the ideas of the healthy that assisted or impeded their quests. Some authors emphasized resignation, often to serve a spiritual purpose. Others promoted self-help, by setting and maintaining a sickroom routine, by undertaking unconventional treatment, or by moving abroad. As Frawley notes, these actions all had implications for the protagonists and for the perceptions of society about them. Controlling the sickroom could convert place from a confining space to an expansive stage. Similarly, becoming an expatriate or choosing rather than enduring a therapy could reconfigure the notion of patient from submissive to dominant. The shift was particularly significant for the assignment of feminine and masculine modeling that resulted. Most interesting is the presentation of evidence that some invalids went beyond shaping or reshaping their identity to explain its effect on the larger universe of the healthy. Such invalids regarded themselves as social critics precisely because they were removed from the stresses of the hectic world beyond their own. Distance permitted greater objectivity and thus transformed the invalid from peripheral soul to pivotal mentor.

Complementing the book's characterizations of the invalid are well-chosen illustrations, a thorough index, and an extensive bibliography, though perhaps one that does not do full justice to the multitude of paragraphs in the press. This de-emphasis is somewhat bothersome because the Victorians deemed the press a powerful means of communication. However, this flaw is hardly sufficient to detract from the merits of the work. By portraying the many faces of invalids, Frawley has preserved their personalities while providing a new lens by which to view their commonality.