Animal and Human Faces in the Long Nineteenth Century

A unique investigation into the relationship between changing conceptions of animals and humans in the long nineteenth century, this book examines the different ways in which faces were read over the long nineteenth century, demonstrating how developing evolutionary science and changing classifications of species influence face-reading theories. Setting scientific writing in dialogue with literary, philosophical, and periodical texts, this book re-evaluates the physiognomic theory of Johann Casper Lavater and charts how nineteenth-century writers such as Charles Bell, Guillaume Duchenne, and Charles Darwin responded to Lavater’s work with their own prioritisation of expressive faces. It uses the fictional writing of Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and H.G. Wells to argue that the depiction of animal and human faces and the relation between the two is central to character formation, plot, and reader response during the long nineteenth century.