Alabaster brow

An alabaster brow is an often-used (or even clichéd) literary device, used particularly in romantic fiction. It describes the forehead of someone who is particularly pale, and usually young and handsome/beautiful.

Uses

Its first recorded use was in 1894, in The Protestation, an ode by a British clergyman, Selwyn Image, that appeared in a collection entitled Poems and Carols:

DEAR Eyes, set deep within the shade

Of Love’s pale alabaster brow;

Of what strange substance are ye made,

That such enchantments on me now,

Resistless, by your grace are laid?

It is also famously used in Anne of Green Gables, a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908:

Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow.

External links

• Text of The Protestation