Sniff: A History of Smells and the Social, Cultural, and Political Meaning of Scent Across Time

Smell has played a central role in human life across time and cultures, shaping identity, community, pleasure, danger, memory, and exclusion. Will Tullett traces the history of scent through locations and experiences including religious rituals, libraries, forests, churches, hospitals, theaters, cinemas, cities, wartime trenches, and funeral homes. The book considers how smells signal food, wine, perfume, fire, gas, rot, witchcraft, murder, and social belonging, while also examining the politics of scents and stinks and the ways communities mark some people as unwelcome. By following the changing sensory environments of different periods and the people who experienced them, the work presents smell not merely as a biological sense but as a historical force that helps define places, bodies, identities, and collective life.