Helen Faucit: Fire and Ice on the Victorian Stage represents the distillation of decades of work by Carol Jones Carlisle on this eminent, but now largely forgotten, Victorian actress. The book is an impressive achievement, and one that will be of great service to the growing number of academics and students now working within the increasingly well-resourced field of Victorian theatre. As interest in the range of Victorian theatres develops, however, it is helpful to be reminded of the narratives that go to produce the spectacle of the legitimate and patent theatres. As Faucit's own family history demonstrates, that narrative was often far from legitimate itself, though it could, and in her case did, encompass a social elevation to the highest levels of English society.