"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. 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. 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.
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."
"*Shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize*
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year
A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year
A Spectator Book of the Year
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year
A New Yorker Book of the Year
Some called it a craze. To others it was a cult. Join prize-winning historian Kathryn Hughes to discover how Britain fell in love with cats and ushered in a new era.
'Smart, gorgeously written cultural history’ TLS
‘Delightful’ Guardian
‘Excellent’ Spectator
‘Joyous cultural history’ The Times
‘He invented a whole cat world’ declared H. G. Wells of Louis Wain, the Edwardian artist whose anthropomorphic kittens made him a household name. His drawings were irresistible but Catland was more than the creation of one eccentric imagination. It was an attitude – a way of being in society while discreetly refusing to follow its rules.
As cat capitalism boomed in the spectacular Edwardian age, prized animals changed hands for hundreds of pounds and a new industry sprung up to cater for their every need. Cats were no longer basement-dwelling pest-controllers, but stylish cultural subversives, more likely to flaunt a magnificent ruff and a pedigree from Persia. Wherever you found old conventions breaking down, there was a cat at the centre of the storm.
Whether they were flying aeroplanes, sipping champagne or arguing about politics, Wain’s feline cast offered a sly take on the restless and risky culture of the post-Victorian world. No-one experienced these uncertainties more acutely than Wain himself, confined to a mental asylum while creating his most iconic work. Catland is a fascinating and fabulous unravelling of our obsession with cats, and the man dedicated to chronicling them.
‘Through humour, elegance and sheer knowledge, Hughes builds something remarkable’ Literary Review
‘If a Louis Wain cat were reading this book, he would raise his topper in tribute’ The Times
‘Catland is a tour de force of (cat) history: sleek, elegant and razor-sharp when needed’ History Today
‘Excellent … Hughes reveals a fascinating, forgotten aspect of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain: how the British fell in love with felines’ Daily Mail
‘An entertaining and often surprising cultural history … typically delivered in an inviting spirit of delight’ New Yorker"
"‘Intriguing, gleefully contentious and – appropriately enough – fizzing with life, Victorians Undone is the most original history book I have read in a long while’ Daily Mail
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
A groundbreaking account of what it was like to live in a Victorian body from one of our best historians.
Why did the great philosophical novelist George Eliot feel so self-conscious that her right hand was larger than her left?
Exactly what made Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862, a good five years after his contemporaries had all retired their razors?
Who knew Queen Victoria had a personal hygiene problem as a young woman and the crisis that followed led to a hurried commitment to marry Albert?
What did John Sell Cotman, a handsome drawing room operator who painted some of the most exquisite watercolours the world has ever seen, feel about marrying a woman whose big nose made smart people snigger?
How did a working-class child called Fanny Adams disintegrate into pieces in 1867 before being reassembled into a popular joke, one we still reference today, but would stop, appalled, if we knew its origins?
Kathryn Hughes follows a thickened index finger or deep baritone voice into the realms of social history, medical discourse, aesthetic practise and religious observance – its language is one of admiring glances, cruel sniggers, an implacably turned back. The result is an eye-opening, deeply intelligent, groundbreaking account that brings the Victorians back to life and helps us understand how they lived their lives."
