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About Faces

Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2010

About this book

When nineteenth-century Londoners looked at each other, what did they see, and how did they want to be seen? Sharrona Pearl reveals the way that physiognomy, the study of facial features and their relationship to character, shaped the way that people understood one another and presented themselves.

Physiognomy was initially a practice used to get information about others, but soon became a way to self-consciously give information—on stage, in print, in images, in research, and especially on the street. Moving through a wide range of media, Pearl shows how physiognomical notions rested on instinct and honed a kind of shared subjectivity. She looks at the stakes for framing physiognomy—a practice with a long history—as a science in the nineteenth century.

By showing how physiognomy gave people permission to judge others, Pearl holds up a mirror both to Victorian times and our own.

Reviews

Although this book is clearly a cultural history of Victorian Britain, the resonances of physiognomy with current preoccupations and events are poignant. With pervasive concerns about the alleged invisible threats in our midst, any technology or idea, old or new, that promises to reveal those threats tends to carry weight. As Pearl rightly concludes, the promise of establishing reliable links between appearance and underlying reality was played for high stakes--and still is.
-- Alan Collins Times Higher Education Supplement

Pearl's book is a brilliant and original contribution to the history of visual culture. It bodes well for the career of a young scholar whose questions are difficult and whose answers are compelling.
-- Sander L. Gilman Bulletin of the History of Medicine

In this smart, engaging book, Sharrona Pearl shows that we can see Victorian culture through new eyes if we learn to look, as the Victorians did, with a physiognomic sensibility. Actors, criminals, the insane, rushed Londoners, Irish, Jews: all came to be categorized in this new form of gaze. Pearl's inventive and expansive About Faces recreates for us this most protean of nineteenth-century sciences.
-- Peter Galison, Harvard University

This is a masterful study of how the Victorians came to see each other and themselves. Sharrona Pearl's witty, incisive, and pathbreaking book uses 'physiognomy'--the scientific study of faces--to tell us about the ways that the nineteenth-century British understood their rapidly changing social world, one face and glance at a time.
-- Alison Winter, author of Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    v
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    Figures

    vii
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    Acknowledgments

    ix
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    Introduction: Face Facts

    1
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    1. Pocket Physiognomy: Sense in the City

    26
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    2. Performing Physiognomy: Imitating Art and Life

    57
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    3. Portrait Physiognomy: Communicating Character

    84
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    4. Caricature Physiognomy: Imaging Communities

    106
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    5. Photographic Physiognomy: Through a Mediated Mirror

    148
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    6. Diagnostic Physiognomy: From Phrenology to Fingerprints

    186
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    Conclusion: Seeing Ourselves

    213
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    Notes

    227
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    Index

    279
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 21, 2022
eBook ISBN:
9780674054400
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
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https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674054400
eBook ISBN: 9780674054400
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For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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