BOOK REVIEW: LAURENCE TALAIRACH, "ANIMALS, MUSEUM CULTURE AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN NINETEENTH - CENTURY BRITAIN: CURIOUS BEASTIES", LONDON, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2021, 309 P.

Abstract

Discovered and collected, caged and catalogued, taxidermized and preserved, reconstituted from old bones or imagined into existence, nonhuman others feature prominently in Laurence Talairach’s Animals, Museum Culture and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth Century Britain (2021). Exploring the discourses of zoology and palaeontology in relation to children’s literature, Talairach shows, through extensive examples, the development and proliferation of animal-centred books for the younger readership, as well as the distinct moral and ethical paths such literary works forged in the context of British imperial expansion. The fascination, or rather the “obsession”, with classification, control and possession of knowledge characteristic of the second half of the eighteenth century, lasting well into the late Edwardian period in Britain, was accentuated by the rising presence of newly discovered animals, or “beasties”. These “curious beasties” (5) not only astounded the British subjects, but puzzled naturalists and scientists alike through their ambiguous nature.