Catland : Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World
- *Shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize*
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