Menagerie. The History of Exotic Animals in England

Abstract

Menagerie is a delightful book and rewards slow reading. It is beautifully written and beautifully illustrated. Readers of this journal will find much to value in its detailed and comprehensive coverage of fascinating stories of the English (and then British) encounter with and collection of exotic animals. The book is arranged chronologically, beginning with the acquisition of animals for the Royal Menagerie in the Tower of London (in the early thirteenth century) and culminating with the closure of the Tower Collection and the opening of London’s zoological gardens (in the early nineteenth). We learn of the variety of roles played by exotic animals: as pets, as status symbols, as diplomatic gifts (not always wanted), as spectacles for commercial exploitation, and as objects for scientific (and gastronomical) enquiry. Grigson’s examples are global. Although not explicitly stated, a central argument of the book seems to the present author to be that the history of the human encounter with exotic creatures is a crucial topic for study precisely because it is also a history of the ‘West’s’ discovery and documentation of the rest of the world. As such, this book is valuable to scholars from a variety of disciplines. Historians of leisure culture will find much of interest in Grigson’s careful exposition of the emergence of an outdoors entertainment industry. Economic historians, especially those interested in global trade, will find analysis of the role of the East India Company and Dutch traders in collecting and transporting foreign species fascinating. Those interested in élite conspicuous consumerism – especially the acquisition and exhibition of prestigious objects (living as well as inanimate) – will find much to appreciate here in accounts of royal and aristocratic collections often intended for public display as well private pleasure. Historians of science will profit from reading about the development of natural history as a scholarly and public interest. As Grigson is at pains to point out, the gathering of animals was not merely for kudos but born of genuine scientific curiosity.