"Some called it a craze. To others it was a cult. Join prize-winning historian Kathryn Hughes to discover how Britain fell in love with cats and ushered in a new era. 'He invented a whole cat world' declared H. G. Wells of Louis Wain, the Edwardian artist whose anthropomorphic kittens made him a household name. His drawings were irresistible but Catland was more than the creation of one eccentric imagination. It was an attitude - a way of being in society while discreetly refusing to follow its rules. As cat capitalism boomed in the spectacular Edwardian age, prized animals changed hands for hundreds of pounds and a new industry sprung up to cater for their every need. Cats were no longer basement-dwelling pest-controllers, but stylish cultural subversives, more likely to flaunt a magnificent ruff and a pedigree from Persia. Wherever you found old conventions breaking down, there was a cat at the centre of the storm. Whether they were flying aeroplanes, sipping champagne or arguing about politics, Wain's feline cast offered a sly take on the restless and risky culture of the post-Victorian world. No-one experienced these uncertainties more acutely than Wain himself, confined to a mental asylum while creating his most iconic work. Catland is a fascinating and fabulous unravelling of our obsession with cats, and the man dedicated to chronicling them"--Publisher's description

• welcome to catland
• early terrors
• the beforetimes
• maternal material
• thinking with cats
• it wasn't milk
• show time
• about town
• ca-doe-mee
• court in the act
• owls and pussycats: queer lives in catland
• odd fish
• cats for pleasure and profit
• hitched
• caterwauling
• enter peter
• 'she smells of fish'
• cat man
• roundheads and cavaliers
• cat kin
• the end of everithing
• catland-on-sea
• pussies galore
• a chat with Mr Louis Wain
• 'yellow peril'
• a man perpetually laughing
• a cat may look at a princess
• metaphysics and madness
• teo tales
• crossed wires
• cat burglar
• cat man in the new world
• sisters under the cat skin
• speed demon
• cat catcher
• home front in catland
• cats under canvas
• catland at the kinema
• Felix turns the tide
• the fire of the mind agitats the atmosphere
• scaredy-cats
• a little man drawing cats
• hardy's heart
• bedlam
• the cat's miaow
• months in the country
• stuffed cats
• wallpaper
• the myth of the disintegrating cat
• on margate sands