Not only must Julia Skelly be congratulated on this welcome study, but some praise is also due to the publisher. It is now comparatively rare to find an academic study with 33 illustrations (including, in this case, all eight plates of George Cruikshank's 1847 series The Bottle), and although better paper and color plates for some images would further enhance the book, the production is handsome. This is as it should be, for visual studies has long since been recognized as a key aspect of interdisciplinary study, particularly of the nineteenth century, and such work often requires good and plentiful images. Skelly makes the point that although much has been written on the history of addiction, relatively little attention from a primarily visual standpoint has been devoted to the material she interrogates here.

Her chosen period, perhaps inevitably, begins with William Hogarth's 1751 engravings Gin Lane and Beer Street and ends just after the cataclysm of World War I, with Alfred Priest's 1919 painting Cocaine, depicting the effects of the drug as provoking thought in the woman staring out at the viewer from the canvas. This progression itself works to illustrate how arguments about addiction became more nuanced and complicated during the period in question. Although representations of addiction have subsequently continued to multiply, a good case is made for concentrating on these key years of the “long” nineteenth century, when a fascination with addiction, multiple anxieties about identities and boundaries, and an increasingly visual culture produced the many powerful images discussed here. Moreover, it is refreshing to see that Skelly employs a broadly “continuist” approach “to illuminate parallels between historical and current ways of viewing (and representing) addicted persons” (2) and acknowledges the help that recovering addicts have given her in informing her investigation of historical material. To work in the field of addiction history, now, without doing this is to miss one of the most important lines of enquiry, even if it requires some caution. Drawing on feminist and queer theory in addition to its primary materials, the book aims to establish a visual culture of addiction and to develop an “addiction theory,” largely by examining how addiction discourses have been produced. In this endeavor it is, to some extent, successful.

The argument is developed by means of five main case studies. Skelly's analysis of works by Hogarth and Cruikshank focuses on the image of the drunken woman, as does her subsequent look at public spaces such as the Gin Palace and the Crystal Palace through the lens of women's consumption. From public spaces she moves to private spaces, to consider the closeting, confining, and punishment of addiction in the next chapter, still largely working on women and alcohol. Finally, a study of the painting Cocaine explores the construction of varied forms of masculinity, contrasting the vulnerability shown as a property of the feminized male addict with the performance of masculinity in cigarette advertising. These are all fascinating explorations, and laudably take the images as a starting point rather than merely using them to illustrate arguments, but they do not form a comprehensive history. At times, the book can feel rather like a baroque necklace with stand-out gems, rather than a smooth chain or even a string of pearls. The author's interest in the individual works or topics is clear, but her account leaves historical gaps. The reader senses some dislocation between the first two chapters, a second unit of the third and fourth chapters, and then the fifth chapter which requires a slight imaginative leap. The majority of the book focuses upon addiction to drink, acknowledging changes in the construction of this, and hence the terms used, and then moves on drug addiction towards the end. Although many scholars and indeed organizations such as the Alcohol and Drugs History Society consider both addictions in tandem, such a uniting is not unproblematic, and deserves more interrogation. However, to produce a more comprehensive history and argument would demand a much longer and more ambitious book, and this publication has its origin in a Ph.D. thesis with clear boundaries. Therefore, it should be judged on this basis, and on these terms it makes a valuable contribution to the fields of both visual studies and addiction studies.

Skelly's development of her “addiction theory” may require more working out and testing against other examples than her chosen ones, but the readings of the individual works are illuminating and informative. The chapter on Cruikshank is a particular pleasure, with mature interrogation of the widely-held opinion that his artistic work declined after his conversion to temperance. The reception of these works, including the monumental painting The Triumph of Bacchus, is questioned and set in the context of contemporary attitudes to teetotalism, and may be the first sign that a re-evaluation of this gifted artist is beginning. Too many publications which make use of The Bottle, for example, give only one or two plates, and to see all eight plates in their order reveals the work's narrative power as well as its richness of symbolic detail. Julia Skelly has certainly continued in the tradition of Julie Codell and many other influential writers on visual culture, whom she acknowledges, and although this is an interdisciplinary history, it is clear that it is written by an art historian.

The final element of the book's title, Wasted Looks, is an elegant pun, but if the images presented here might be considered to have failed as deterrents, or been “wasted,” if such was their purpose, a look at Skelly's careful and illuminating discussion of them will certainly not be a wasted experience for those interested in British cultural history.