According to the song, ‘Everybody wants to be a cat,’ and this small, free and fun exhibition in the foyer of the British Library lets you see just how many writers, poets and illustrators have been inspired by the feline character.
The show brings together stories and illustrations involving cats from a wide range of texts over the last few hundred years. These range from nursery rhymes through to children’s classics such as Alice in Wonderland with its famous Cheshire Cat…
The Cheshire Cat – original illustration for Alice in Wonderland by Sir John Tenniel (1866)
… to a display case devoted to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, that extremely unexpected production by the Grand Master of poetic Modernism, T.S. Eliot, featuring original drafts of the poems with hand-written corrections…
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, 1940 edition illustrated by Nicolas Bentley
… through to more modern children’s classics like Winnie the Witch and her rapscalious cat, Wilbur.
Winnie the Witch and her cat, Wilbur, characters by Valerie Thomas, illustrations by Korky Paul
The exhibition features a number of mewsical cats, and several who have written their autobiographies which shed a less than flattering light on their human owners.
There’s Orlando (The Marmalade Cat), hero of the series of 19 illustrated children’s books written by Kathleen Hale between 1938 and 1972.
Or Mog, who appears in 17 picture books by Judith Kerr, which have appeared between 1970 and 2015.
A section titled ‘The Purrfect crime’ features cats which have been involved in fictional crime, or have helped fictional crime fighters, sometimes giving the game away or… letting the cat out of the bag (an expression which dates back to the 18th century).
Many ‘traditional tails’ have featured strong independent cats, most notably Puss In Boots, who made his first appearance in a collection of fairy tales in the 1550s. 400 years later, a comic anti-hero appeared in the shape of The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, who made his first appearance in 1957.
With their solitary and independent ‘cattitude’, cats have always aroused a sense of mystery. Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories feature The Cat Who Walked By Himself.
The Cat that Walked by Himself by Rudyard Kipling (1902) illustration by Kipling himself
I’d be ‘kitten’ you if I said it was worth making a pilgrimage to visit, but it’s worth popping into for half an hour if you’re in the King’s Cross / St Pancras area, to catch up with some fur-miliar, and some purr-haps less fur-miliar faces.
It includes a reading corner complete with children’s books, a family trail and sound recordings.
Related links
- Cats on the Page continues at the British Library until Sunday 17 March 2019
Reviews of other British Library exhibitions
- Cats on the Page (December 2018)
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War (December 2018)
- James Cook – The Voyages (June 2018)
