A thick, tangled and deliciously idiosyncratic history of hair ... There is plenty to inform and intrigue.

Times Literary Supplement

These learned and witty essays explore the Enlightenment's obsession with the “social magic” of hair, from celebrity hairdressers to hairy comets, to outlaw hair to the global trade in textiles. Mediator of foundational, philosophical, social, racial, and sexual differences, hair emerges as the catalyst for vividly creative critical encounters with the material past.

Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

This volume invites us into the lively and inventive world of hair in the 18th century, in all of its messy magic and heightened glory. Each essay reveals new ways of seeing and understanding Enlightenment hair-real, artificial, and imagined.

Chloe Wigston-Smith, University of York, UK

Like a great new cut, A Cultural History of Hair in the Age of Enlightenment allows you to envisage the world differently. Working like master wigmakers, the editors have assembled a star roster of contributors and crafted an elegant collection that braids together the study of sociability, materiality and the body. Rarely have I read a series of essays that so powerfully argues for the centrality of its topic to 18th-century life.

Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph, Canada