Read on Twitter
Here’s a positive thread about some of the excellent books out there on smell histories. It’s an exciting, growing field.
Let’s start with @smellosopher new book Smellosophy - which starts with history and broadens out into a vast, multifaceted, interdisciplinary exploration of smelling and smells. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983694 the latter chapters will also have import for sensory historical method.
Also just published is Andrew Kettler’s book on smell and Atlantic slavery, a densely researched analysis of smell’s role in perpetuating racism and hierarchy in the Atlantic world. A timely book. http://services.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/atlantic-history/smell-slavery-olfactory-racism-and-atlantic-world?site_view=desktop
Sticking with America, there’s also the recent book by @EvanKutzler all about the senses in American Civil War Prisons, with a fascinating chapter that engages with anosmia and smell loss (a rarity in scholarship on the history of smell). https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653785/living-by-inches/
If this gets you into the senses in the American Civil War, you should check out Mark Smith’s ‘The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege’, all about the senses and the experience of that war. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-smell-of-battle-the-taste-of-siege-9780199759989?cc=us&lang=en&
However, if you want something more sensually refined, then Catherine Maxwell’s work on perfume in Victorian literature is an excellent and invigorating read from somebody who knows their lit but also their perfume! https://global.oup.com/academic/product/scents-and-sensibility-9780198701750?cc=gb&lang=en
Continuing in a literary vein, @fried has produced a wonderful book on smell in eighteenth-century literature and how we read literary sources for scent: the chapter on sulphur is my favourite! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reading-Smell-Eighteenth-Century-Fiction-Transits/dp/1611487528
However, if you’re interested in less sanitary scents still, @Rummage_work account of smell and stench in early modern towns, which drills down into neighbourly disputes, street cleaning, and the smells of trades. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300137569/hubbub
Bringing this story into the nineteenth century, there is the fantastic book by @MelanieKiechle which brings together medicine, the environment and urban politics to think about smell in U.S cities. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295746104/smell-detectives/
If this has all got a bit modern for you, we can go back into the early modern period with @trickyholly groundbreaking work on perfume and the lost materiality of scent in early modern England https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Ephemeral_History_of_Perfume.html?id=eQMwptJKG5IC&redir_esc=y
Further back, you say? How about @SensusOlfactus new book on the senses of smell in the Middle Ages - bringing together histories of theology, philosophy, and medicine to help understand smell. http://www.routledge.com/9780429815935
Even further?! Then there’s the collection edited by Mark Bradley on smell in the ancient world, from philosophy to the scent of Roman dining and much else! https://www.routledge.com/Smell-and-the-Ancient-Senses/Bradley/p/book/9781844656424
I could go on! And I will, I'll return to this thread over the coming months and gradually add more material. It's a testament to the quality, range, and creativity of the work going on in the history of smell.
If you want a handy summary of the work in the history of smell published before 2014, then check out @reinarzhistory overview (also with interesting new titbits about 19thC): https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/28aww9yq9780252034947.html
Future sets of additions to this thread will include older classic studies and newer work that includes smell alongside other senses.
Classic studies might begin with Alain Corbin’s Foul and the Fragrant, which really fired the starting gun on the history of smell. 38 years later it remains foundational (though scholars have critically engaged with its arguments) https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Foul_and_the_Fragrant.html?id=LI1M4sLcvPAC&redir_esc=y
Another earlier work is Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synott's book, Aroma. Mixing a broad sense of smell's history with anthropology and sociology, this book provided a lot of directions for subsequent scholars to head off in https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ywGIAgAAQBAJ
In a more literary sphere, Hans J Rindisbacher published a 1992 book on the 'The Smell of Books' tracking scents and smelling European novels - particularly good for its comparisons between different European literary traditions https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LMs3JyRkrCAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=smell+of+books&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0hOq0u9bqAhVlpHEKHXxcDzUQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=smell%20of%20books&f=false
Another work which I think is a real classic is Janice Carlisle's fantastic 2004 book 'Common Scents' on smell in Victorian fiction. Excellent on gender and class https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X6FHDAAAQBAJ&dq=smell+victorian+novel&source=gbs_navlinks_s
We'll come back to the classics another time in the thread, but what about books that treat smell alongside other senses? Here's a few to get you started. Robert Jutte has published a wide-ranging history of the senses that includes smell https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gxBYSZj2UMYC&pg=PA265&dq=smell+history&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_yKuJvNbqAhXTuXEKHTWUAeE4ChDoATAJegQIARAC#v=onepage&q=smell%20history&f=false
On race, Mark Smith's How Race is Made, is important in illustrating the way in which race as a category was produced through sensory stereotyping - including ideas about what it meant to smell 'white' or 'black. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jav5Y9wnZGwC&pg=PT198&dq=making+racism+mark+smith&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKp73fvNbqAhVYURUIHUpRCDwQ6AEwBXoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=making%20racism%20mark%20smith&f=false
If you're more interested in the senses and the politics of domestic space, then @chattyplatty has a fab new book on the sensory worlds of the ancient Roman home that includes plenty of smell https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5BazDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=hannah+platts&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjG4p6GvdbqAhVCr3EKHYmnDa0Q6AEwAHoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=hannah%20platts&f=false
What about medicine and the senses? The later, great, Roy Porter, co-edited a collection on precisely this theme in 1993 and it contains some fantastic essays on other senses alongside the material on smell. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iOw8N6FAqNAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+sensory+smell&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjevOHKvdbqAhXXQRUIHXiCByk4ChDoATAGegQIARAC#v=onepage&q=history%20sensory%20smell&f=false
If you're into medieval history then Chris Woolgar's book on the senses in late medieval England has a wealth of material on smell, as well as other senses, often based on accounts and serial sources. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HectxYEZg0oC&dq=woolgar+smell&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Anyway, that's enough for today. More smelly publications (new and old) will be added to this list over time.
