Essays on physiognomy : designed to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind / written in the German language by John Caspar Lavater ; and translated into English by Thomas Holcroft ; to which are added one hundred physiognomonical rules, a posthumous work by Mr. Lavater and Memoirs of the life of the author compiled principally from The Life of Lavater, by G. Gessner.
A 1850 London reprint of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy, translated by Thomas Holcroft from the German, for general readers interested in reading character from faces. The plates are rows of pen-and-ink profile heads, some in wigs and headscarves, others bearded or grimacing, arranged in numbered grids for side-by-side comparison of expression and type. A designer could draw on their clean contour lines, hatched shading, and the repeated profile format as a study in character types and expressive faces.
