Published By: Pen & Sword History
Publication Date: 11th December 2017
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 9781526705006
Price: £14.99
Blurb
From elaborate Victorian cat funerals to a Regency era pony who took a ride in a hot air balloon, Mimi Matthews shares some of the quirkiest—and most poignant—animal tales of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Meet Fortune, the Pug who bit Napoleon on his wedding night, and Looty, the Pekingese sleeve dog who was presented to Queen Victoria after the 1860 sacking of the Summer Palace in Peking. The four-legged friends of Lord Byron, Emily Brontë, and Prince Albert also make an appearance, as do the treasured pets of Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Charles Dickens.
Less famous, but no less fascinating, are the animals that were the subject of historical lawsuits, scandals, and public curiosity. There’s Tuppy, the purloined pet donkey; Biddy, the regimental chicken; and Barnaby and Burgho, the bloodhounds hired to hunt Jack the Ripper. Wild animals also get a mention in tales that encompass everything from field mice and foxes to alligators and sharks lurking in the Thames.
Using research from eighteenth and nineteenth century books, letters, and newspapers, Mimi Matthews brings each animal’s unique history to vivid life. The details are sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but the stories are never anything less than fascinating reading for animal lovers of all ages.
My Review
I’m spoiling you, and me for that matter. I’ve had a pleasant afternoon snuggled under my nice thick, crocheted blanket, my hounds on my legs, reading this lovely, lavishly illustrated book. The stories really take second place to the wonderful reproductions of famous and not-so-famous paintings of animals from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The lives of a variety of animals are written using primary and secondary sources, especially the letters of their humans and those paid to memorialise them in paint.
This is not an information dense book, but it does provide a different angle to look at the 18th and 19th centuries. People known for their art, literary or political achievements are seen through different eyes. Empress Josephine’s adored pug, Fortune, helped smuggle letters into and out of her prison cell when she was still Madame Josephine de Beauharnaise, Two years after her husband was murdered in the Terror, Fortune earned Napoleon Bonaparte’s endless enmity, by biting the man on his calf on their wedding night. Lord Byron treasured his Newfoundland, Boatswain, to the point that he wanted to be interred with the dog. Emily Bronte went everywhere with her bulldog and her fondness for the creature was used to explain how a quiet parson’s daughter could possibly write her untamed fictions.
Well-written and engaging, a must for the animal lover
4/5
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