Catland: Feline enchantment and the making of the modern world

Prize-winning historian Kathryn Hughes on the quirky history of how Victorian and Edwardian Britain fell in love with cats.

Join historian and author Kathryn Hughes for a fascinating feline exploration of Victorian society and discover how Britain was taken over by the ‘cult of the cat’.

By the end of the nineteenth century, cats no longer had to earn their keep by catching mice. Instead, Victorian and Edwardian Britain fell in love with cats, in part due to social and economic forces, but also due to the work of artist Louis Wain, whose drawings of anthropomorphic cats delighted the world.

As well as the unstoppable ‘rise of the cat’, Catland follows the incredible life story of troubled artist Louis Wain. 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 an asylum while creating his most iconic work.

Kathryn Hughes tells the incredible story of how the country became obsessed with cats, and the life of the prolific illustrator who transformed the image of cats forever.

Kathryn Hughes is the critically acclaimed author of The Victorian Governess, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and the hugely acclaimed George Eliot: The Last Victorian, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography.

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