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The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in…
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The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century London (editie 2015)

door Christopher Plumb (Auteur)

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1321,514,599 (3.5)2
"In the eighteenth century, it would not have been impossible to encounter an elephant or a kangaroo making its way down the Strand, heading towards the menagerie of Mr. Pidcock at the Exeter Change. Pidcock's was just one of a number of commercial menagerists who plied their trade in London in this period the predecessors to the zoological societies of the Victorian era. As the British Empire expanded and seaborne trade flooded into London's ports, the menagerists gained access to animals from the most far-flung corners of the globe, and these strange creatures became the objects of fascination and wonder. Many aristocratic families sought to create their own private menageries with which to entertain their guests, while for the less well-heeled, touring exhibitions of exotic creatures both alive and dead satisfied their curiosity for the animal world. While many exotic creatures were treasured as a form of spectacle, others fared less well turtles went into soups and civet cats were sought after for ingredients for perfume. In this entertaining and enlightening book, Plumb introduces the many tales of exotic animals in London."--Bloomsbury Publishing.… (meer)
Lid:lukehoney
Titel:The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century London
Auteurs:Christopher Plumb (Auteur)
Info:I.B.Tauris (2015), Edition: Illustrated, 304 pages
Verzamelingen:Jouw bibliotheek
Waardering:
Trefwoorden:london, history, animals

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The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century London door Christopher Plumb

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I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[b: The Georgian Menagerie|25557516|The Georgian Menagerie|Christopher Plumb|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431931967s/25557516.jpg|45354043] by [a: Christopher Plumb|13996178|Christopher Plumb|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] is precisely what its title portends it to be. The book details the evolution of the menagerie during the long eighteenth century, and with it the changing ways in which British culture viewed animals and their relationships to them. The book is cleverly divided into a variety of sections to better sum up the changing cultural values:

Trade
Ingredients
Crowds (which delves into people's relationships with animals at large and contains sections such as "Bitten, Crushed and Maimed" and "Under the Knife"
Humor

For such a slim volume the book is suprisingly informative and contains a great deal of primary sources within. While the way some animals are treated is incredibly distressing (Chunee the elephant in particular) what surprised me the most was how little our behavior towards some animals has changed. There are still idiots poking and harassing animals at the zoo, still people who view animals more as property than sentient beings, and still all too many people who believe that animal parts have a strong place in medicine that will revitalize them.

[b: The Georgian Menagerie|25557516|The Georgian Menagerie|Christopher Plumb|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431931967s/25557516.jpg|45354043] was an eye-opening book. Say what you will about the past, but at least during that time animals weren't destroyed for attacking those who abused them. ( )
  Lepophagus | Jun 14, 2018 |
It must have been fun to live in a time when people believed in dragons. Elephants, you see "waded into pools of water when they wanted to give birth; a male would stand by the pool to guard the mother from their mortal enemy, the dragon." How marvelous.

Unfortunately, that seems like one of the only fun aspects of life in the Georgian period – especially for animals. In the "long eighteenth century", there was very little empathy or sentimentality expended on fellow human beings, much less animals (except where the sentimentality ran deeper than the Thames), and as is to be expected when reading about this period there were passages that will make your hair curl. Remember, this is the time period of John James Audubon, whose name has become synonymous with conservation, but whose paintings are all (I believe all) of birds he killed and posed.

But he was setting out his nets in the wilds of America. This book explores the impact of non-native animals introduced into Europe, and especially England – and particularly London. I wouldn't have thought there would be enough to fill a book – but I underestimated the potential. By combing through historical records of all sorts, including journals and letters, newspapers and wills and criminal files, Christopher Plumb has compiled a kind of mind-boggling array of creatures that made their way – living or dead – to and through London.

As pets, as exhibits, as subjects for study, as food, and as other commodities, exotic animals could be big business. They could also let their investors down in a big way; between the fragility of health of creatures being taken from the tropics to London and the cutthroat tactics involved in the trade, fortunes could vanish in what seemed like the blink of an elephant's eye. Some animals became fashionable – I felt a little silly at having to readjust my thinking about parrots and canaries, because obviously they are not native to England (canaries being named for their islands of origin), because they became so common. ("Dennis O'Kelly …died of gout in 1787. His obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine made more mention of his parrot than of his own life.") ("Wigton tried to prove the ownership of the bird by putting his hand in the cage and tickling the bird; the bird bit him and made a croaking sound just as Wigton said it would.")

The problem with this sort of history is that because the data being mined is scattered and fragmented and rather random, there is rarely a beginning and a middle and an end to the stories being told. Example: after a close-up encounter with, I believe, a leopard (somehow I failed to make a note of the animal), "the boy, 'in a gore of blood', was sent to Guy's Hospital for surgery." We are never told if he survived; the records might not have done so, if there ever were any.

Still, even as a collection of facts and anecdotes, this is fascinating. Gruesome in places (the fate of the elephant kept at the Exeter Exchange is horrifying) and repulsive in places (the whole section on bears. And civets. I mean – snuff? Snuff??), but always fascinating. (About the former, a quote: "the little elephant that had been coaxed up two flights of stairs and put in his den was now, some 16 years later, a big angry elephant". A full-grown elephant on the third floor of a city building. Yeah. You know that's not going to end well.)

The writing was erudite and served very well to stitch together the patchwork of the history, with the author's sense of humor cropping out in places. ("Its taste, God forbid, was described as 'subacrid' or 'bitterish'." Again, I stupidly didn't make a note on the highlight, but I have a horrible feeling that quote came from the civet section…) The only thing that stood out as less than enjoyable was the constant use of the phrase "the middling sort" in place of something like "the middle class".

I highly recommend this to writers of fiction set in the period. Where the historical record is a a bit scanty, there's endless room for the historical novelist to play.

This was received from Netgalley, free for an honest review. Thank you! ( )
  Stewartry | Aug 20, 2015 |
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"In the eighteenth century, it would not have been impossible to encounter an elephant or a kangaroo making its way down the Strand, heading towards the menagerie of Mr. Pidcock at the Exeter Change. Pidcock's was just one of a number of commercial menagerists who plied their trade in London in this period the predecessors to the zoological societies of the Victorian era. As the British Empire expanded and seaborne trade flooded into London's ports, the menagerists gained access to animals from the most far-flung corners of the globe, and these strange creatures became the objects of fascination and wonder. Many aristocratic families sought to create their own private menageries with which to entertain their guests, while for the less well-heeled, touring exhibitions of exotic creatures both alive and dead satisfied their curiosity for the animal world. While many exotic creatures were treasured as a form of spectacle, others fared less well turtles went into soups and civet cats were sought after for ingredients for perfume. In this entertaining and enlightening book, Plumb introduces the many tales of exotic animals in London."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

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