1st Edition

Animal Welfare and Anti-Vivisection 1870-1910 Nineteenth-Century Women's Mission

Edited By Susan Hamilton
    1144 Pages
    by Routledge

    This three-volume set brings together a range of documents that allows researchers to explore the nineteenth-century vivisection controversy, its relation to the prominent animal welfare movement and the specific role of women within the movement.
    The collection maps the battle over the meaning of animals in Victorian culture, from utility to companionship, showing the range of political, rhetorical and representational strategies that were deployed as physiology and anti-vivisection struggled to assert the 'truth' of animal bodies.
    The volumes include press articles by key pro- and anti-vivisectionist activists in the established press, Victorian government materials, scientific papers and illustrations, and the pamphlets and journals of the anti-vivisectionist movements.
    Recent collections in this series include Josephine Butler and the Prostitution Campaigns (March 2003, 5 volumes, £495) and Women, Madness and Spiritualism (June 2003, 2 volumes, £250). Forthcoming titles include Women and Cross Dressing 1800-1939 (2005, 3 volumes, c. £325) and Feminism and the Periodical Press 1900-1918 (2005, 3 volumes, c. £325).

    Volume I: Francis Power Cobbe
    The first volume is compiled from writings by Frances Power Cobbe, the leader of the anti-vivisection movement, an eminent mid-Victorian feminist journalist, and one of a handful of women to make a steady living writing for the mid-19th century established press.
    Cobbe agitated on behalf of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, which sough to limit the use of live animals in scientific experiments. She also founded the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection in 1875, and edited the Zoophilist for ten years. This volume represents a selection of Cobbe's writings from the established press, pamphlets, papers and books.
    Volume II: Anti-Vivisection Writings
    This volume brings together the writings of other key anti-vivisectionist activists, including Richard Holt Hutton, Louisa af-Hageby, Ouida de la Ramee, George Hoggan, Anna Kingsford, Mona Caird and selections from anti-vivisectionist periodicals, including the Home Chronicler, the Zoophilist and the Anti-Vivisectionist.
    Volume III: Pro-Vivisection Writings
    This final volume focuses on writings of those who made the case for vivisection, primarily scientists, as the vivisection question moved from consideration of anaesthesia in experimentation, to debate on the Cruelty to Animals Act, through to criticism of the bureaucratic structures that supervised vivisection in England, and the public education pamphlets produced by the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research.