Women against cruelty is the first book to explore women's leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain, drawing on rich archival sources. Women founded bodies such as the Battersea Dogs' Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and various groups that opposed vivisection. They energetically promoted better treatment of animals, both through practical action and through their writings, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Yet their efforts were frequently belittled by opponents, or decried as typifying female 'sentimentality' and hysteria. Only the development of feminism in the later Victorian period enabled women to show that spontaneous fellow-feeling with animals was a civilising force. Women's own experience of oppressive patriarchy bonded them with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of masculine values in society, and from an assumption that all-powerful humans were entitled to exploit animals at will. -- .

This is the first book to explore women's leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain, drawing on rich archival sources. Women founded bodies such as the Battersea Dogs' Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and various groups that opposed vivisection. They energetically promoted better treatment of animals, both through practical action and through their writings, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Yet their efforts were frequently belittled by opponents, or decried as typifying female 'sentimentality' and hysteria. Only the development of feminism in the later Victorian period enabled women to show that spontaneous fellow-feeling with animals was a civilising force. Women's own experience of oppressive patriarchy bonded them with animals, who equally suffered from the dominance of masculine values in society, and from an assumption that all-powerful humans were entitled to exploit animals at will. -- .

One of England's most famous caricaturists, James Gillray, was an immensely successful and popular artist, yet there were no accounts of his work published in England during his lifetime. The single contemporary source on Gillray is a series of commentaries published in the German journal London und Paris between 1798 and 1806. Christine Banerji and Diana Donald have translated and edited selected commentaries, with accompanying illustrations, to reveal how Gillray's art was understood by his contemporaries. The edition offers a unique insight into the role of satire in British politics during the Napoleonic era and shows the subtle artistry of Gillray's designs. The volume also includes an informative introduction which places Gillray and his work in the context of a fascinating episode in Anglo-German relations at the turn of the eighteenth century.

The Eighteenth century is often represented, applying Tom Paine's phrase, as 'The Age of Reason': an age when progressive ideals triumphed over autocracy and obscurantism, and when notions of order and balance shaped consciousness in every sphere of human knowledge. Yet the debates which surrounded the development of Eighteenth-century thought were always open to troubling doubts. Was nature itself truly an ordered entity, as Newton had argued, or was it a mass of chaotic, randomly moving atoms, as some materialist thinkers believed? This book explores the tensions and conflicts in these debates through a series of interdisciplinary essays from leading international scholars, each challenging the idea that the Eighteenth century was an age of order.

One of England's most famous caricaturists, James Gillray, was an immensely successful and popular artist, yet there were no accounts of his work published in England during his lifetime. The single contemporary source on Gillray is a series of commentaries published in the German journal London und Paris between 1798 and 1806. Christine Banerji and Diana Donald have translated and edited selected commentaries, with accompanying illustrations, to reveal how Gillray's art was understood by his contemporaries. The edition offers a unique insight into the role of satire in British politics during the Napoleonic era and shows the subtle artistry of Gillray's designs. The volume also includes an informative introduction which places Gillray and his work in the context of a fascinating episode in Anglo-German relations at the turn of the eighteenth century.