Mobilizing Literature in the Animal Defense Movement in Britain, 1870-1918

The eighteenth-century and Romantic literature have often been seen as intellectual precursors that contributed to the rise of modern sensibility and British love of animals. However, rather than regarding the literary sphere as a static tradition that effected instantaneous influence over human attitudes towards animals, I regard it as a repository of resources open to uses in the ongoing animal rights movement of the later nineteenth century in Britain. After a brief outline of the development of this movement in the Victorian age, this article examines the special affinity claimed by the movement with the literary sphere. It explores the movement's engagement with the available literary resources, including contemporary reviews, criticism, publications, constructions of lineage, solicitations of support and other writings. It then demonstrates the movement's active utilization of the intellectual, emotional and cultural resources in various literary traditions, including Romantic poetry, nature writing, and nineteenth-century novels, to meet its numerous needs. The period under focus in the article is the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: this is when the British animal defense movement entered into an active period of rapid expansion and radicalization.