Free Delivery Over $100
|
|
|||
|
||||
OverviewHow cat mania exploded in the early twentieth century, transforming cats from pests into beloved pets. In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had now become an object of pride and deep affection. From presidential and royal families who imported exotic breeds to working-class men competing for cash prizes for the fattest tabby, people became enthralled to the once-humble cat. Multiple industries sprang up to feed this new obsession, selling everything from veterinary services to leather bootees via dedicated cat magazines. Cats themselves were now traded for increasingly large sums of money, bolstered by elaborate pedigrees that claimed noble ancestry and promised aesthetic distinction. In Catland, Kathryn Hughes chronicles the cat craze of the early twentieth century through the life and career of Louis Wain. Wain's anthropomorphic drawings of cats in top hats falling in love, sipping champagne, golfing, driving cars, and piloting planes are some of the most instantly recognizable images from the era. His round-faced fluffy characters established the prototype for the modern cat, which cat ""fanciers"" were busily trying to achieve using their newfound knowledge of the latest scientific breeding techniques. Despite being a household name, Wain endured multiple bankruptcies and mental breakdowns, spending his last fifteen years in an asylum, drawing abstract and multicolored felines. But it was his ubiquitous anthropomorphic cats that helped usher the formerly reviled creatures into homes across Europe. Beautifully illustrated and based on new archival findings about Wain's life, the wider cat fancy, and the media frenzy it created, Catland chronicles the fascinating history of how the modern cat emerged. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Kathryn Hughes (Professor of Life Writing, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia)Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.50cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.748kg ISBN: 9781421448145ISBN 10: 1421448149 Pages: 432 Publication Date: 30 July 2024 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of Contents"1. Welcome to Catland 2. Early Terrors 3. The Beforetimes 4. Maternal Material 5. Thinking with Cats 6. It Wasn't Milk 7. Show Time 8. About Town 9. Ca-Doe-Mee 10. Court in the Act 11. Owls and Pussycats: Queer Lives in Catland 12. Odd Fish 13. Cats for Pleasure and Profit 14. Hitched 15. Caterwauling 16. Enter Peter 17. ""She Smells of Fish"" 18. Cat Man 19. Roundheads and Cavaliers 20. Cat Kin 21. The End of Everything 22. Catland-on-Sea 23. Pussies Galore 24. A Chat with Mr. Louis Wain 25. ""Yellow Peril"" 26. A Man Perpetually Laughing 27. A Cat May Look at a Princess 28. Metaphysics and Madness 29. Two Tales 30. Crossed Wires 31. Cat Burglar 32. Cat Man in the New World 33. Sisters Under the Cat Skin 34. Speed Demon 35. Cat Catcher 36. Home Front in Catland 37. Cats Under Canvas 38. Catland at the Kinema 39. Felix Turns the Tide 40. The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere 41. Scaredy-Cats 42. A Little Man Drawing Cats 43. Hardy's Heart 44. Bedlam 45. The Cat's Miaow 46. Months in the Country 47. Stuffed Cats 48. Wallpaper 49. The Myth of the Disintegrating Cat 50. On Margate Sands Sources and Resources Illustration Credits Acknowledgments Index"ReviewsA tremendous literary feat in which we learn about Victorian sociology through the work of a remarkably unique artist. —Kirkus Reviews (starred) Hughes narrates her invigorating wealth of information in a clever prose style. It makes for a unique and amusing window onto turn-of-the-20th-century art and culture. —Publishers Weekly A tremendous literary feat in which we learn about Victorian sociology through the work of a remarkably unique artist. —Kirkus Reviews (starred) Through humour, elegance and sheer knowledge, Hughes builds something remarkable. —Literary Review Lively, iconoclastic and consistently riveting, this is popular history in the best sense. --The Wall Street Journal Sometimes a book just bowls you over with how good it is. For instance, I can remember starting my review of A. S. Byatt's Possession with the sentence 'Sometimes a critic just wants to say Wow.' Still, I never expected to feel anything approaching Nabokovian bliss when reading five lengthy biographical essays about figures and incidents from 19th-century British history. But Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone is just amazing, and her 'Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum' are so various, so imaginatively structured, so delicately salacious and so deliciously written that I sighed with pleasure as I turned the pages and even felt those tiny prickles along the neck that A. E. Housman once claimed were the sign of true poetry . . . This is popularized history done right, done with panache. Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious. --Michael Dirda, Washington Post The average biographer peers into a Great Man's mind. Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum, in contrast, narrates the lives of five body parts. --New York Times The body parts in these Tales of the Flesh . . . illuminate the wider cultural world in which their owners participated. --New York Review of Books The tales are entertaining, but Hughes's real achievement is historical--amounting to a new understanding of, as she puts it, 'what it meant to be a human animal in the nineteenth century.' --The New Yorker Author InformationKathryn Hughes is emerita professor of life writing at the University of East Anglia and a literary critic for The Guardian. She is the author of Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum and George Eliot: The Last Victorian. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
||||
