The contributors examine various forms of human dominion over animals as manifest in fiction, performance, and the visual arts, as well as in hunting, killing, vivisection, and zookeeping. Distinguished by its acknowledgment of how the Victorians' obsession with animals continues to haunt twenty-first-century animal rights debates, Victorian Animal Dreams provides valuable insight into the burgeoning field of animal studies and points toward future studies of animals in the Victorian period.

Contents: General editor's preface; Introduction, Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay. Part I Science and Sentiment: Animal angst: Victorians memorialize their pets, Teresa Mangum; Victorian beetlemania, Cannon Schmitt; Killing elephants: pathos and prestige in the 19th century, Nigel Rothfels; Designs after nature: evolutionary fashions, animals and gender, Susan David Bernstein; Dying like a dog in Great Expectations, Ivan Kreilkamp. Part II Sex and Violence: Nature red in hoof and paw: domestic animals and violence in Victorian culture, Martin A. Danahay; 'The crossing o' breeds' in The Mill on the Floss, Mary Jean Corbett; Horses and social/sexual dominance, Elsie B. Michie; Pacific harvests: whales and albatrosses in 19th-century markets, Anca Vlasopolos. Part III Sin and Bestiality: 'The mark of the beast': animals as sites of imperial encounter from Wuthering Heights to Green Mansions, Deborah Denenholz Morse; Beastly criminals and criminal beasts: stray women and stray dogs in Oliver Twist, Grace Moore; The sin of sloths: the moral status of fossil megatheria in Victorian culture, Alan Rauch; Tiger tales, Heather Schell; The empire bites back: the racialized crocodile of the 19th century, Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge;Afterword, Harriet Ritvo; Index.