Note 15 to Chapter 5 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
This loss of faith was probably due to the influence of Lewes, who accepted Gall's principle of the physical basis of mind but rejected the cranioscopy of Spurzheim, Combe, and their followers. See Haight, p. 188; N. N. Feltes, "Phrenology: From Lewes to George Eliot," Studies in the Literary Imagination, I (1968), 13-22; Anna Theresa Kitchel, George Lewes and George Eliot (New York: John Day Co., 1933), pp. 92-93 T. L., "Applications of Phrenological Doctrines," Encylopedia Britannica, 8th ed. (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1853-60), XVII, 565-67; and John R. Reed, Victorian Conventions (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 336-37. For an example of physiognomical portraiture by Lewes himself, see Ranthorpe, p. 4.
Last modified 20 September 2000