Queen Victoria’s Canine Companians
Queen Victoria’s Canine Companians

Summary/Abstract: The Victorian era developed new evaluations of animals, and the biography of its eponymous monarch offers many examples of more humane, sentimental, and often anthropomorphising attitudes towards man’s canine companions. Since her early youth, Victoria took interest in animal protection, e.g. shortly after her coronation she granted the prefix Royal to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals founded in 1824. Pictorial and photographic portraits of the Queen frequently show her in the company of animals, especially dogs and horses. Usually, the images are given a symbolic meaning, commenting on the emergent bourgeois morality that the monarch herself favoured.

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