In contrast to the other senses, smell has long been thought of as too elusive, too fleeting for traditional historical study. Holly Dugan disagrees, arguing that there are rich accounts documenting how men and women produced, consumed, and represented perfumes and their ephemeral effects. She delves deeply into the cultural archive of olfaction to explore what a sense of smell reveals about everyday life in early modern England.

In this book, Dugan focuses on six important scents--incense, rose, sassafras, rosemary, ambergris, and jasmine. She links these smells to the...