Consumptive Chic

A well-researched and diligently compiled cultural history of tuberculosis. * Book of the Week, Times Higher Education * Drawing on medical treatises, beauty manuals, fashion periodicals, and other literature of the period, this thoroughly researched and erudite work will satisfy those interested in social and cultural history. * Library Journal * I enjoyed learning more about the historical development of the disease ... very well written, with substantial attention to detail. * Fashion, Style and Popular Culture * [Carolyn] Day's monograph is a valuable addition to our understanding of just how a disease as overdetermined as consumption plays out across different discourses that constitute a particular social world: in this case, the period roughly covering 1780-1850. * Social History of Medicine * At its best, the book is an innovative and well-researched effort to explore how the apparently meaningless ebb and flow of aesthetic tastes is linked to a larger epidemiological and discursive contexts. * Victorian Studies * Consumptive Chic fuses medical, social, appearance and fashion histories into a fascinating, challenging story about the disease-ridden shadows behind idealized feminine beauty between 1785 and 1850. -- Lou Taylor, University of Brighton, UK. Impeccably researched and beautifully executed, Consumptive Chic tells the surprising, wholly engrossing story of how a wretched disease became both fashionable and aesthetically pleasing. This is a relentlessly intelligent study, one that will find a wide and admiring audience. -- Mark Smith, Carolina Distinguished Professor of History, University of South Carolina, USA Consumptive Chic strips the beauty myths of tuberculosis down to the corset. She takes us on an emotional journey, using the slim, pale, and pathetic lives of women sufferers in the early 19th century to explain why many found the look so appealing. It is an illuminating and chastening read. -- Helen Bynum, author of Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis, University College London, UK Beautifully illustrated, Consumptive Chic weaves together the histories of fashion and medicine to chart the symbolic import of the female tubercular body. Day mobilizes an impressive range of primary materials to illuminate the rise of consumption as a fashionable malady, in spite of - or perhaps owing to - its devastating effects. -- Jessica Clark, Assistant Professor of History, Brock University, USA