Kathryn Hughes

Gebundenes Buch

Catland

Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania

Beschreibung

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--

Autor

Kathryn 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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Seitenzahl: 432
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. Juni 2024
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 232mm x 153mm x 38mm
• Gewicht: 740g
• ISBN-13: 9781421448145
• ISBN-10: 1421448149
• Artikelnr.: 68443402

Rezensionen

'Hughes' excellent, curiosity-stuffed book is about the moment towards the end of the 19th century when cats started to be afforded the same dignity as dogs' Spectator

'A darting, hobby-horsical, hugely interesting book with the feel of a passion project rather than a sobersides work of history. But its ease and authority come from how Hughes as a historian is completely at home in the era under discussion, offering feline sideways glances at class, economics, urbanisation, eugenics, gender politics and much else besides' Guardian

'Hughes has a brilliant eye for absurdities and untold stories. This isn't a gushing ode to pussycats but a wide-ranging history of a period of

huge upheaval' i News

'Consistently fascinating ... A tremendous literary feat' Kirkus Review, starred

'Cat lovers, and even the cat-indifferent, are encouraged to put their trust in Hughes. Catland is a delight. This is history as told by someone whose knowledge of and infectious enthusiasm for her subject is matched by obvious delight and warm, expressive writing' New York Times

'What's most delightful about Catland is how cleverly it explores so many corners of society. In the life and work of this peculiar illustrator, Hughes manages to open up a fresh venue on our "magnificent cultural obsession"' Washington Post

'A sparkling account of the 'great cat mania' that engulfed whole societies between roughly 1870 and 1920 and whose effects are still with us today' Wall Street Journal

'Kathryn Hughes is one of our best loved and most incisively witty social historians ... brilliantly researched and unforgettable' Miranda Seymour

'Catland is a one-off, a book of high whimsy and deep research, a work of great subtly that is also startlingly original. Part-biography, part-social history, Catland is its own breed of historical investigation' Amanda Foreman

'Hughes combines ingenuity, insight, and immense literary charm ... A perfect gift for cat lovers, art lovers, and readers of all persuasions' Elaine Showalter