author
Eden Warwick
d. 1873
Best known for a witty Victorian spoof of pseudoscience, this 19th-century writer used humor to poke at the era’s fascination with reading character from physical features. The name on the title page was a pen name: behind it was Birmingham solicitor George Jabet.
1 Audiobook
Notes on Noses
by Eden Warwick
About the author
Eden Warwick was the pen name of George Jabet (1815–1873), an English solicitor associated with Birmingham’s literary and civic life. He is remembered mainly for publishing Nasology: Or, Hints Towards a Classification of Noses in 1848, a mock-serious work that played with the language of physiognomy and phrenology.
The joke was clever enough that some readers treated it more seriously than it was meant to be. Jabet also published other works under the Eden Warwick name, including The Poets’ Pleasaunce, showing a taste for literary play as well as satire.
Today, the Eden Warwick name survives less as a full public persona than as one of those memorable Victorian pseudonyms attached to an unusual book. Even so, the work’s afterlife says a lot about the period: people were fascinated by systems that claimed to decode human character, and Warwick knew exactly how to turn that fascination into entertainment.