ABOUT THE BOOK:

'A Feline Affair: Great Writers and the Cats Who Owned Them'

Writers and cats go together beautifully. In the silence of a study, the cat is the perfect companion for an author – it doesn’t need to be taken for walks, yet is there for comfort. Throughout history, famous writers have loved and been inspired by their cats.

This exciting new book, written by popular ArtsNational lecturer Susannah Fullerton and published by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, looks at 17 great writers and their cats, showing how each cat was used in poems, novels, short stories, essays, letters and children’s books, and explaining the special relationship between writer and feline and the joy and ideas the cat provided.

Learn about Dr Johnson’s Hodge. What role did he play in the creation of the first great English dictionary and how did he come to be memorialised in a popular London statue? Robert Southey is best remembered today for a story about a little girl who meets three bears, yet his great passion was not bears, but cats. His pampered Rumpelstilzchen inspired a memoir. Edward Lear, author of The Owl and the Pussycat, was inspired by Foss, his cat with only half a tail. Dickens was more of a dog man, yet was won over by a deaf kitten named Bob. French author Colette had several husbands, but none of them ever mattered as much as her Chartreux cats, and her short story La Chatte reflects that passion. Mark Twain so loved cats that, when he went on holiday, he rented kittens to play with. L.M. Montgomery dedicated a novel to a beloved cat, Sir Winston Churchill claimed that his cat Nelson contributed to the war effort, and macho Ernest Hemingway turned into a total softie when it came to the more than twenty cats who shared his homes. Margaret Mitchell underwent the publicity of the film of Gone with the Wind with Old Timer at her side. Doris Lessing wrote movingly of her disabled cat, and Dame Lynley Dodd was inspired by two family pets when she created the memorable Scarface Claw and Slinky Malinki.

The book also includes fascinating anecdotes about literary cats – in hotels, book shops, theatres, nursery rhymes and stories. This is a book for anyone who loves cats and who also loves great writing.

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