Thomas S. Gowing’s The Philosophy of Beards is a spirited Victorian lecture in defense of facial hair, argued on physiological, artistic, and historical grounds. Gowing celebrates the beard as a mark of manliness, beauty, and dignity, lamenting the fashion for shaving and rallying readers to the cause.
At once earnest and entertaining, the book is a remarkable artifact of nineteenth-century ideas about masculinity and appearance. Gowing marshals art, history, and physiology in service of the whiskered face. A famously eccentric study in the culture of grooming and adornment, it is offered here as a free EPUB download.