Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania
How 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.
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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.
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.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone "New York Times"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.'
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone "The New Yorker"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
A zesty account of the many ways in which the cat came in from the alley and took up its place at the hearth. Hughes makes the case that the new world of cats which Wain both chronicled and helped to create is a signal instance of modernism in all its confusion and uncertainty.
--Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
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
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
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, reviewing Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone, 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.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone, New York Times
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.'
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone, The New Yorker
The body parts in these Tales of the Flesh . . . illuminate the wider cultural world in which their owners participated.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone, New York Review of Books
Lively, iconoclastic and consistently riveting, this is popular history in the best sense.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone, The Wall Street Journal
Through humour, elegance and sheer knowledge, Hughes builds something remarkable.
-- "Literary Review"A tremendous literary feat in which we learn about Victorian sociology through the work of a remarkably unique artist.
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred)"Lively, iconoclastic and consistently riveting, this is popular history in the best sense.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone "The Wall Street Journal"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"A zesty account of the many ways in which the cat came in from the alley and took up its place at the hearth. Hughes makes the case that the new world of cats which Wain both chronicled and helped to create is a signal instance of modernism in all its confusion and uncertainty.
--Rebecca Mead "The New Yorker"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"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"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 Undoneis 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, reviewing Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone "Washington Post"The body parts in these Tales of the Flesh . . . illuminate the wider cultural world in which their owners participated.
--Review of Kathryn Hughes's Victorians Undone "New York Review of Books"
