Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World

*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

© 2024 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008365134

Release date

Audiobook: April 25, 2024