Kristoffer's Menagerie RSS

This blog is a collection or archive of my thoughts and progress on my PhD. My research looks at animals as objects in eighteenth-century Britain. I hope this blog helps me keep track of my thoughts and records my descent into insanity as I write-up my thesis this year.

I have become interested in animal rights and veganism so my thoughts on these will appear from time to time. Recipes too, well only those that don't contain tofu or seitan.

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Aug
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This is a book I bought recently for my research and collection. It is a childrens book from  1815 and belonged to a girl called Gertrude Paget who grew up to become Viscountess Guillamore. She was the daughter of the Duke of York’s Aide-de-camp, the Honourable Berkeley Thomas Paget and his wife Sophia Askell Bucknall. Gertrude Paget was born in December 1805 so she would have been around ten when she was given this book. Her family’s London home was in Mayfair, a few minutes walk around from the menageries and musuems along Piccadilly.  I am interested in this book because it is written to inculcate kindness and sensitivity in children towards animals.  But these sensibilities are encouraged more because naughty children who are cruel to animals carry out injustices on other people when grown up.  Animals around 1800 in conservative literature are very much still objects with the status of ‘things’ despite their suffering. I want to tie in this book with other secondary literature on the nature of suffering and ‘counter-sensibility’ in animals. Like lap-dogs and counter-sensibility.

This is a book I bought recently for my research and collection. It is a childrens book from  1815 and belonged to a girl called Gertrude Paget who grew up to become Viscountess Guillamore. She was the daughter of the Duke of York’s Aide-de-camp, the Honourable Berkeley Thomas Paget and his wife Sophia Askell Bucknall. Gertrude Paget was born in December 1805 so she would have been around ten when she was given this book. Her family’s London home was in Mayfair, a few minutes walk around from the menageries and musuems along Piccadilly.  I am interested in this book because it is written to inculcate kindness and sensitivity in children towards animals.  But these sensibilities are encouraged more because naughty children who are cruel to animals carry out injustices on other people when grown up.  Animals around 1800 in conservative literature are very much still objects with the status of ‘things’ despite their suffering. I want to tie in this book with other secondary literature on the nature of suffering and ‘counter-sensibility’ in animals. Like lap-dogs and counter-sensibility.