Frolics in Catland
London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1905. Item #04805
Cats at Play - and Louis Wain at His Most Delightful
The Rare “Untearable” Frolics in Catland
WAIN, Louis, illustrator. GALE, Norman, verses. Frolics in Catland. Father Tuck’s “Travels in Fairyland” No. 9174. London: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., n.d. [ca. 1905].
First “Untearable” edition. Oblong quarto (8 5/8 × 10 3/4 inches; 220 × 273 mm.). [28] pp. With eight superb full-page color illustrations by Louis Wain, together with numerous smaller color illustrations throughout the text. Verses by Norman Gale.
Publisher’s quarter red cloth over glazed color pictorial boards, the front cover depicting three wonderfully animated Wain cats at play, one beating a drum while his companions dance and brandish a tennis racquet and tambourine. Pictorial endpapers printed in blue and orange. Child’s neat ownership signature dated 1918 on ownership page. Inner hinges expertly strengthened; some light wear to corners. An unusually well-preserved example of this exceptionally scarce Louis Wain title.
The illustrations present Louis Wain’s Catland in full swing. His irrepressible felines play tennis and golf, row determinedly across the water, gather flowers, play with wooden bricks and, above all, make music. A magnificent feline brass band includes drummer, tuba player and flautists, while elsewhere two solemn cats perform a comic duet from sheet music. The final scenes show members of the “famous Band” practising together in a private room. The photographs beautifully demonstrate the remarkable variety of Wain’s cats, from sporting competitors to musicians and performers. photos_04805
Particularly charming are Wain’s sporting cats. In one full-page illustration a pair confront each other across a tennis net, while another shows the golfer “Caddie Cat” contemplating a difficult shot. Two rather self-satisfied oarsmen pull across a lake, accompanied by Gale’s characteristically comic verse:
“They wouldn’t have to work so hard if only they would row
Their boat in the direction that the river means to go!”
Throughout, Wain transforms recognizable Edwardian pastimes into an entirely feline social world. His cats do not merely imitate people: they possess their own clubs, sports, music, friendships and personalities.
At the end of the nineteenth century Louis Wain (1860–1939) had become one of Britain’s most recognizable illustrators. His anthropomorphic cats—playing cricket and golf, attending parties, making music, going to school and generally conducting themselves with all the enthusiasms and absurdities of contemporary human society—became enormously popular.
H.G. Wells famously summarized Wain’s achievement:
“He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world.”
As Simon Houfe observed, from the 1880s Wain began depicting cats as they had scarcely been depicted before: in humorous guises and recognizably human situations, while retaining an extraordinary ability to capture feline expression and character.
Frolics in Catland is an especially appealing example of that achievement. Rather than presenting a single narrative, it offers something approaching a panorama of Wain’s Catland, populated by sportsmen, musicians, eccentrics and assorted feline personalities. The large oblong format gives the illustrations considerable presence, while the brilliantly colored “Untearable” leaves were expressly designed to withstand the enthusiastic handling of their juvenile owners.
That very construction helps explain the book’s scarcity today. Such children’s books were intended to be played with rather than preserved, and surviving examples are consequently often worn, damaged or incomplete. The present copy, retaining its striking pictorial boards and displaying only relatively minor signs of its original use, is therefore particularly desirable.
Not in Dale. Unrecorded by Wood.
Contents: Conrad’s Croquet; The Plucky Cricketer; [Two Cats Playing Tennis]; The Winner; [Two Cats Playing Golf]; Dairy Down Golf Club; Amelia Milk; Augustus Purd; Tramping Ted; [Two Cats Rowing a Boat]; Camilla Clott; [Two Cats Picking Flowers]; Wooden Bricks; The Poor Bugler; [Two Cat Brass Band]; Jake; [Two Musical Cats]; Pippina Joy; Signor Whiskerando Kat; Velvina Fox; Devoted Dandy; [Two Cats Singing a Comical Duet]; Tomto; [Two Members of the Famous Band]; Fernand and Tarina Tab.
Price: $1,250.00