Harriet Ritvo gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations.

When we think about the Victorian age, we usually envision people together with animals: the Queen and her pugs, the sportsman with horses and hounds, the big game hunter with his wild kill, the gentleman farmer with a prize bull. Harriet Ritvo here gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations. Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big game hunting; an era of reform and reformers that saw the birth of the Royal SPCA. Ritvo examines Victorian thinking about animals in the context of other lines of thought: evolution, class structure, popular science and natural history, imperial domination. The papers and publications of people and organizations concerned with agricultural breeding, veterinary medicine, the world of pets, vivisection and other humane causes, zoos, hunting at home and abroad, all reveal underlying assumptions and deeply held convictions—for example, about Britain’s imperial enterprise, social discipline, and the hierarchy of orders, in nature and in human society. Thus this book contributes a new new topic of inquiry to Victorian studies; its combination of rhetorical analysis with more conventional methods of historical research offers a novel perspective on Victorian culture. And because nineteenth-century attitudes and practices were often the ancestors of contemporary ones, this perspective can also inform modern debates about human–animal interactions.

Over the past two decades, Harriet Ritvo has established herself as a leading scholar in animal studies and one of those most responsible for establishing this field of study as a crucial part of environmental and social history. Her two well-known books, The Platypus and the Mermaid and The Animal Estate, did much to introduce and illuminate the importance of nonhuman animals to the study of human culture. Hunting and husbandry, as well as petkeeping and zoo-going, forge powerful connections between animal lives and those of humans: in fact, animals have helped define what a human is. They have also been one of the most reliable measures of humans' disproportionate influence on the environment. From domestication to extinction, the human impact on animal populations has been profound. In the essays collected in Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras, Ritvo explores our attitudes toward animals, from cruelty to sentimentality to the indifference of pure practicality, and touches on many social and scientific issues, including genetic engineering and an animal protection movement much older than most readers would think (animal advocacy was a cause embraced by many Victorians). While Ritvo's writing represents the cutting edge in animal history, it has always been characterized by its accessibility, and these essays originally appeared not only in scholarly journals but also in Grand Street, Daedalus, and American Scholar. Collected for the first time in a single volume, they reveal an important dimension of human history by looking to those other creatures that have surrounded us all along.

Explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising examination into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals.

The classic French novel written by a soldier, who would later die during World War I, tells the story of Auguste Meaulnes and the "domain mysterieux."

Animals in rural Egypt became enmeshed in social relationships and made possible many tasks otherwise impossible. Rather than focus on what animals represented or symbolized, Mikhail discusses their social and economic functions, as Ottoman Egypt cannot be understood without acknowledging animals as central shapers of the early modern world.

The creator of Animal House at last tells the real story of the fraternity that inspired the iconic film -- a story far more outrageous and funny than any movie could ever capture.