How to Read Faces, or Practical Physiognomy Made Easy

About this book

A forehead, a jaw or the arrangement of features supposedly offers clues to character. James Coates turns the human face into a diagram of qualities that he believed a trained observer could read.

The book illustrates the Victorian enthusiasm for physiognomy, presenting appearance as a system of signs. Such inferences have no reliable scientific basis and have often supported prejudice. Read critically, the work becomes an illuminating record of the period's urge to classify human nature, and of how confident judgments could arise from very weak evidence.