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In the late nineteenth century, a number of prominent reformers were influenced by what Edward Carpenter called “the larger socialism,” a philosophy that promised to completely transform society, including the place of animals within it. To open a window on late Victorian ideas about animals, Rod Preece explores what he calls radical idealism and animal sensibility in the work of George Bernard Shaw, the acknowledged prophet of modernism and conscience of his age. Preece examines Shaw’s reformist thought -- particularly the notion of inclusive justice, which aimed to eliminate the suffering of both humans and animals -- in relation to that of fellow reformers such as Edward Carpenter, Annie Besant, and Henry Salt and the Humanitarian League. This fascinating account of the characters and crusades that shaped Shaw’s philosophy sheds new light not only on modernist thought but also on an overlooked aspect of the history of the animal rights movement.

The eighteenth century saw the rise of new and more sympathetic understanding of animals as philosophy, literature, and art argued that animals could feel and therefore possess inalienable rights. This idea gave birth to a diverse movement that affects how we understand our relationship to the natural world. The Cry of Nature details a crucial period in the history of this movement, revealing the significant role art played in the growth of animal rights. Stephen F. Eisenman shows how artists from William Hogarth to Pablo Picasso and Sue Coe have represented the suffering, chastisement, and execution of animals. These artists, he demonstrates, illustrate the lessons of Montaigne, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, and others—that humans and animals share an evolutionary heritage of sentience, intelligence, and empathy, and thus animals deserve equal access to the domain of moral right. Eisenman also traces the roots of speciesism to the classical world and describes the social role of animals in the demand for emancipation. Instructive, challenging, and always engaging, The Cry of Nature is a book for anyone interested in animal rights, art history, and the history of ideas.

This set reprints a fascinating variety of texts originally published between 1790 and 1820. Offering a unique look at the cultural and literary history of food in the eighteenth century, some highlights include: treatises on food and drink adulteration; vegetarian tracts; the period's most influential pamphlet about boycotting sugar as part of the anti-slavery debate; works on alcohol consumption, Shelley's translation of Euripedes' satyr play about cannibalism; and much more.