Great Writers & the Cats Who Owned Them
In Susannah Fullerton’s creative biographical collection, seventeen cats are vehicles for stories of the authors who cared for them.
“Since cats were first domesticated and since human beings first began to write,” the book notes, “there has been a happy conjunction between authors and felines.” The biographies included here bear that out, with titles like “Selma, whose death was memorialized for Horace Walpole” and “Bambino, whose slave was Mark Twain.” While each story has a cat as its entry point, the chapters discuss the authors’ lives with pets in general terms, including when cats pop up in their work.
A wide range of stories are included. Charles Dickens’s cat Bob was his constant companion, and when Bob died, his front leg became a taxidermy letter opener. Ernest Hemingway adopted Boise on Christmas in 1942 and raised him on his farm in Cuba, and the kitten both inspired a section of a novel and spurred the author to house generations of feline offspring. Wooskit inspired Dame Lynley Dodd to fictionalize his adventures as some of New Zealand’s favorite stories for children. And sidebars are devoted to related topics throughout, including cats who appear in nursery rhymes, the phenomenon of library cats, and specific novels’ feline characters. Charming drawings of the cats’ antics are included.
Great Writers & the Cats Who Owned Them is a sweet and enlightening biographical collection.
Reviewed by
Jeff Fleischer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
