Why read Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots?

Book cover of Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Book description

In 1775, a visitor to Laurent Spinacuta's Grande Menagerie at the annual winter fair in Paris would have seen two tigers, several kinds of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor-in all, forty-two live animals. In Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots, Louise Robbins explains that exotic animals from around…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Garrioch

Author

Animals were everywhere in eighteenth-century Paris: captives in menageries, pets in apartments, trained and displayed at fairs and in the streets, pitted against each other in bloody fights. Exotic parrots linked Paris to tropical Africa and the Americas. An entire guild sold only birds and small animals. Attitudes towards animals are extraordinarily revealing about any society, and this is a book full of insights.

From David's list on The best books on the social history of eighteenth-century Paris.