'In her riveting and meticulously researched book, Diana Donald explores the complex relationships between women, gender and animal protection movements. She shows, with insight and compassion, what was at stake in the quest to change both attitudes towards and practices concerning animals. Weaving together accounts of women's activism, legal and political debates, controversies around vivisection and the roles of institutions, Donald is writing important and timely history about forms of empathy.'
Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, Durham University

'In a compelling and fascinating work, Diana Donald restores the words and deeds of 19th century women to the historical record—updating interpretations with a powerful and empowering narrative of the inseparability of animal advocacy, politics and gender.'
Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat and Burger

'Rebuilding the pieces of a complex and stratified history in which were contained very different demands and sensitivities (political, religious, cultural), Donald highlights, on the one hand, how the natural convergence
between women's rights and animal protection was the result of a hierarchical and patriarchal social system and, on the other hand, as "sympathy, compassion, and caring "became the basis" upon which theory
about human treatment of animals should be constructed.'
Ricerche di Storia Politica

Preface
Prefatory note: The archive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Introduction
1 Sexual distinctions in attitudes to animals in the late Georgian era
2 The early history of the RSPCA: its culture and its conflicts
3 Animal welfare and ‘humane education’: new roles for women
4 The ‘two religions’: a gendered divide in Victorian society
5 Anti-vivisection: a feminist cause?
6 Sentiment and ‘the spirit of life’: new insights at the fin de siècle
Index