Fascinating... as well as putting a human face to all the people involved – victims and adversaries – it fills in the omissions (many of them deliberate) in the official version of events

Superb... A wholly absorbing and powerful narrative full of good sense, properly weighed facts and clear understanding

Abdullah's voice is reasoned and often humorous, didactic rather than dictatorial ... he is a spokesman for his country

Romer carries the reader along effortlessly on a lengthy, complex yet immensely satisfying journey

Intriguing, iconoclastic ... An artist's sensibility is evident ... memorable and original

Enthralling from the first word to the last

Moving and extremely well-documented

Excellent... One often feels as if one is actually present at the scenes she describes. There can be no higher praise... Inconvenient People is as interesting a work of social history as you are ever likely to read.

Fascinating and chilling, Inconvenient People reads like a series of Victorian novels in brief - only all the tales are true

This superlative study opens the door on the cruelty of the quacks who locked up lost souls

Several riveting cases Sarah Wise has unearthed for this fine social history of contested lunacy in the 19th century... Wise has given us a fascinating book that teems with rich archival research. The pictorial sources are an added boon and make for a wonderfully illustrated addition to the history of the 19th century

Rich, gripping and moving mix of social history, psychiatry and storytelling

A dark and disturbing investigation...trenchant and disturbing book

There is so much to interest and entertain in this book, which is enhanced by over eighty informative illustrations

A wonderfully engaging book

Fascinating book (4 stars)

Wise reopens 12 uncontested lunacy cases from the 1800s, meticulously exploring the details of each and recreating the stories with a page-turning eye for a great narrative

Sarah Wise knows how to grab the reader’s attention with phrases that would have done Bulwer-Lytton proud. But the book’s readability does not disguise its scholarship. This is a valuable contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century

I thrilled to Sarah Wise’s Inconvenient People, an enthralling study of those who fell foul of Victorian mad-doctors and greedy relatives

It makes for a harrowing read, but much of it is also hilarious, and as gripping as the most lurid Victorian melodramatic novel. Yet again, one closes a book with the impression that beneath the polished mahogany surfaces and shimmering silks of Victorian interiors lurked Hell itself