Literature’s 10 Best Beards

Have you ever wondered which of all the beards in the literary world are the 10 best? Me neither. Luckily, however, there are others out there taking care of this fantastically important question. Here The Guardian’s John Mullan tackles the question and comes up with a shortlist of 10 of the best.

And if you’re in the mood to be obsessing about facial hair, we still haven’t seen anything better than Allan Peterkin’s One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair from 2001. As January Magazine contributing editor Adrian Marks pointed out in a review of the book, “Oddly, considering the number of men capable of sprouting facial hair, beards, their evolution and their care and feeding have been given very little ink over the years.”

It seems possible that, with all of this attention, that’s a situation that is changing.