Do beards matter? That is Alun Withey's original question, in Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Practice in England, 1650–1900. His answer is yes, though it is complicated. He makes clear that facial hair in all its forms has played a more or less subtle role in the cultural formation of class and gender, and that a fresh consideration of this neglected subject promises an array of new insights. Up to this point, historians have generally considered facial hair (if at all) in terms of cultural history, particularly expressions of gender ideology, advocacy, and polemics. Withey tackles this subject from the perspective of social history. How, why, and when did men shave? How did they interact with the barbering profession? How and when did they learn to shave themselves? What products were used, and how were they marketed? We have known remarkably little about these questions.

Withey's focus, England between 1650 and 1900, is a period marked by the rise of shaving as the norm among elite men, with the brief exception of the mid-nineteenth century. More saliently, it was a period when ideas of the male body and its relation to masculinity underwent profound changes that were reflected in grooming practices. The discipline of the body, including shaving, mirrored general ideas of masculine discipline. Withey traces the material culture of shaving in terms of barbering and self-shaving, and rightly suggests a reappraisal of men as consumers of cosmetics.

Concerning Beards is made up of a series of four overlapping but distinct studies. The first part examines medical literature and traces the demise of the humoral theory of the body, along with the concurrent “de-medicalization” of hair. Human hair was no longer seen as an emanation and expression of the bodily processes, but as an external feature of the body. The second part of the book examines the barbering profession, drawing from probate records, diaries and professional journals to trace the fortunes of British barbers and barber-surgeons. The rise of self-shaving, and later the beard fashion, strained but did not eliminate the profession. The third section of the book examines differences of class, presenting descriptive and photographic evidence that laboring classes did not blindly adopt the practices of elite and middling men. In the age of shaving, they might be found bearded, while in the bearded era of the late nineteenth century, they made more use of barbers than did their social superiors. In the fourth and final section, Withey examines the consumer economy of personal grooming, finding that the market for razors, shaving soaps, oils, and perfumes greatly expanded, emerging stronger than ever after a brief setback during the mid-nineteenth-century turn to beards.

Withey acknowledges that his work is meant as a groundwork for further research. Indeed, a number of unanswered questions remain. One is the relation of medical ideas to social practices. He claims that “early modern facial hair reflected humoral conceptions of the male body” (33), but it is not clear that it did. Beards lost favor before the humoral theory did, and the subsequent lack of medical interest in facial hair in the nineteenth century failed to dampen the passionate embrace of beards in the 1850s. His evidence affirms, therefore, that hair fashions are a cultural, rather than medical or intellectual, phenomenon. In general, while offering many important corrections, his findings confirm that grooming practices are indeed shaped primarily by the cultural discourse on gender and the body. For example, Withey rightly points out that we should not suppose eighteenth-century men to have been so smoothly shaven as their fashionable portraits suggest, because they typically visited the barber just twice a week. On the other hand, his evidence attests to that era's aspiration to a clean-shaven face, even among the laboring classes. This aspiration may help to explain one of Withey's important findings, the rise of self-shaving, which is the only practical way for men to achieve a regularly clean-shaven look. His discussion of the mid-nineteenth century presents a similar pattern. Withey's discovery of the relative popularity of shaving among the laboring classes during a bearded era is an illuminating and even surprising finding, yet here again, it is apparent that many working men tended to emulate the fashion ideals of the day, albeit incompletely. One wonders if shaving retained its value for working men as a practical matter. Beards, after all, were relatively hard to manage and keep clean. Whatever the case, Withey's research helpfully suggests that beards could, and did, act as a marker of class status in the late nineteenth century.

It is possible that Withey might have derived even more insights by merging at least some of his parts into a larger whole. The separate sections on barbering and the commodification of shaving products present a number of intersecting aspects that could be fruitfully synthesized. The rise of self-shaving is at that center of both of these discussions, and the sources and implications of that great development might be better understood by adopting a more integrated approach.

In general, Withey has achieved what he set out to do, which is to present a well-written analysis of the social history of facial hair and shaving. He has also clarified many of the outstanding problems and opportunities that remain, particularly the integration of social and cultural history. In Masculinities in Politics and War (2004), John Tosh wisely cautioned his fellow historians not to overemphasize symbolic and discursive expressions of gender to the neglect of actual social practice (52). Withey helps redress this imbalance, and his work will be a key part of the coming effort to integrate cultural and social research into a fuller understanding of male self-presentation and the formation of masculinity.