Essays on physiognomy / tr. from the German of John Caspar Lavater, by Thomas Holcroft. Also one hundred physiognomical rules, taken from a posthumous work by J.C. Lavater; and a memoir of the author.
An 1853 London reprint of Thomas Holcroft's English translation of Johann Kaspar Lavater's essays on physiognomy, the pseudo-science of reading character from facial features, aimed at a general readership. Its engraved plates show rows of numbered profile and three-quarter head studies, men and women in wigs, caps and cravats, with a few exaggerated grotesque faces. A designer might take the sequences of profile silhouettes and the clear numbered-grid layout as models for character studies or comparative figure panels.
