The Pug Who Bit Napoleon

The Pug Who Bit Napoleon is a collection of anecdotes and lore about animals and their humans in the 1700-1800's.  Many of them encountered (or occasionally bit) famous people, were immortalized by poets or artists or otherwise found their ways into the annals of history.

The book has a chapter/story format with different animals separated into different categories.  There are categories for dogs and cats of course, but also for farm animals, birds, rodents (and rabbits), reptiles and fish and a couple of stories about exotic animals (foxes) and a final weirdly endearing chapter about flea circuses of the Victorian era (odd and silly in about equal measures).

The book is lavishly illustrated with beautiful paintings and illustrations from the period.  The stories themselves are well written and (mostly) historically sound, and when there are discrepancies, they're clearly noted.  The book also includes a useful index and a sources list as well as a bibliography which provides a good resource list for further reading.

I enjoyed this book a lot and found the author's informal style both accessible and fun to read.

Stats: The Pug Who Bit Napoleon; nimal Tales of the 18th&19th Centuries
192 pages, Kindle & Paperback format,

Anticipated pub. date: 30 Nov, 2017

Author: Mimi Matthews 

Publisher: Pen & Sword UK

Four stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.