Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919: Wasted Looks

This book investigates and problematizes the long-held belief that addiction is legible from the body, thus positioning visual images as unreliable sources in attempts to identify alcoholics and drug addicts. Examining paintings, graphic satire, photographs, advertisements and architectural sites, Skelly explores such issues as ongoing anxieties about maternal drinking; the punishment and confinement of addicted individuals; the mobility of female alcoholics through the streets and spaces of nineteenth-century London; and soldiers' use of addictive substances such as cocaine and tobacco to cope with traumatic memories following the First World War.