Animal Companions

In 1712, Lady Isabella Wentworth wrote to her son Thomas to inform him of the death of her pet monkey, Pug. Pug had been her companion for seven years, and was a frequent topic of conversation in her correspondence. The monkey’s demise hit Lady Isabella hard, triggering an outpouring of emotion and grief for her ‘darling’ pet (p. 174). Pug is just one of many beloved animals in Ingrid Tague’s fascinating book. Today, pets are ubiquitous, providing us with company, affection and diversion. In the eighteenth century, they functioned by turns as cherished companions and valued commodities, complicating the boundary between human and non-human and featuring in wider debates about slavery, luxury and fashion. Ingrid Tague’s book offers a novel insight into pet-keeping in eighteenth-century Britain, situating the practice within the wider contexts of consumerism and imperial expansion. The Georgian period witnessed a rise in the consumption of luxury goods, from mirrors and clocks to porcelain. Animals, exotic and otherwise, formed part of the growing desire for possessions, becoming increasingly common household items for people across the social spectrum. The opening chapter here explores the growing popularity of pet-keeping, emphasising its cross-class appeal. Tague examines the different sources of companion animals, from itinerant vendors to commercial menageries, and studies the accessories available for them—dog collars, monkey chains, bird organs for teaching canaries to sing. She also draws on newspaper advertisements for lost dogs to illuminate the animals’ value to their owners. In 1777, for instance, the Morning Post featured an advertisement for a ‘white Pomeranian dog, close shaved all over’, who ‘answers to the name of Muff’, offering a reward of one guinea for his safe return (Morning Post, 27 July 1782)

Affection · Appeal · Art · Art history · Consumerism · Demise · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Sociology · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Law · Psychology