Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania

In this jaunty account, biographer Hughes (George Eliot) details the Victorian and Edwardian cat craze that transformed pitiful-looking agents of pest control into sleekly gorgeous, companionable house pets. Commercial illustrator Louis Wain, known for his big-eyed, round-faced felines, was a prominent force behind the making of “the modern cat.” Though Hughes structures her narrative around his life story (which ended with a 15-year stint in an asylum—still drawing cats, but abstract and multicolored ones), she also ventures beyond his influence, tracing a web of individuals who, from 1870 to 1920, built a cat-centered subculture. Among them were Frances Simpson, who popularized breeding standards, and Harrison Weir, whose reputation as a naturalist “bestowed scientific legitimacy” onto cat shows (his 1889 “manifesto” Our Cats and All About Them claimed that the only reason cats were so ill-behaved—a common perception at the time—was because they were generally mistreated; he recounts a friend’s great shock at encountering cats sitting quietly and purring). Other topics include the “cat’s meat men,” who sold cat food door-to-door in London, and the queer undertones sometimes apparent in the era’s cat obsession (Hughes contends Edward Lear’s children’s poem “The Owl and the Pussy-cat” is a queer allegory). 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. (June)