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Next Tuesday, 19 November, Sibylle Erle will be addressing our Seminar on London with her paper entitled: 'Phrenology through the Eyes of the Physiognomist: Character in the Romantic Period'. We begin at 5:30pm in Room G31, Foster Court, University College London, Malet Place, London WC1. Directions can be found here<https://webmail.london.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=04c2ca88f45149a18b96c5fc429572c4&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ucl.ac.uk%2fmaps> . Dr Erle's paper will be followed by questions and discussion, and the meeting will conclude with a glass of wine at 7:30pm. A précis and speaker profile are appended below. All are welcome! Best wishes, Dr Elinor Shaffer, FBA Convenor, Reading and Reception Studies Seminar Senior Research Fellow, IMLR, School of Advanced Studies ----------------- 'Long before phrenology, which mapped and measured mental faculties via the bumps on the human skull, became established in characterisation in both popular culture and Victorian Literature, Johann Caspar Lavater’s ideas on physiognomy pervaded the thinking of the Romantics. Writing on character in the Romantic period can be seen as an experiment with different modes and models of expression and conceptual problems, as evident in the many illustrated editions of Lavater’s *Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe*, 4 vols (1775–78; *Essays on Physiognomy,* 1789–98). It either influenced or anticipated discussions about bodily or mental identity as well as personality. This paper explores the tension between visual and verbal constructions of character, focuses on the confrontations between 'self' and 'other' and analyses the various situations in relation to the demands of literary form (travel writing, drama, poetry and the Gothic). It draws on examples from writers as diverse as Wollstonecraft, Park, Baillie, Blake and Mary Shelley, and links them to larger topics within Romanticism, such as sensibility, emotion, exploration, science and the Sublime.' *Sibylle Erle* FRSA is Senior Lecturer in English at Bishop Grosseteste University Lincoln, author of *Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy* (Legenda, 2010) as well as various articles on Blake, Henry Fuseli and Lavater and co-editor of *Science, Technology and the Senses* (Special Issue for RaVoN, 2008) and volume editor of *The Panorama, 1787-1900: Texts and Contexts* (5 vols, Pickering & Chatto, 2012). With Morton D. Paley she is co-editing *The Reception of William Blake in Europe* (Bloomsbury). She has co-curated the display “Blake and Physiognomy” (2010-11) at Tate Britain and devised an online exhibition of Tennyson’s copy of Blake’s *Job* for the Tennyson Research Centre (2013). Apart from reception, she is working on character, emerging on the interface between Literature and Science, in the Romantic period.