Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes

After discussing Lavater's place in eighteenth-century German letters and his importance in the history of Western physiognomy, Dr. Tytler examines the literary portrait in the modern novel and suggests that the development of techniques of character description and the growth of observational powers of narrators and characters alike, as manifest in fiction from the 1790s onward, may be more fully appreciated when considered in the light of the physiognomical background previously delineate...