Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat

'An inspired and original tale ... Jeoffry is the greatest cat in the English language' Hilary Mantel'Simply unforgettable ... one of the most beautiful and haunting books of recent times' Alexander McCall Smith'A heart-lifting delight; I absolutely loved it. A triumph' Alexandra Harris Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written. Prize-winning biographer Oliver Soden combines meticulous research with passages of dazzling invention to recount the life of the cat praised as 'a mixture of gravity and waggery'. The narrative roams from the theatres and bordellos of Covent Garden to the cell where Smart was imprisoned for mania. At once whimsical and profound, witty and deeply moving, Soden's biography plays with the genre like a cat with a toy. It tells the story of a poet and a poem, while setting Jeoffry's life and adventures against the roaring backdrop of eighteenth-century London.

Author: Oliver Soden
Publisher: History Press
Published: 10/01/2022
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.30w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9780750999311
ISBN10: 0750999314
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Pets | Cats | General
- Poetry | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

About the Author

Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster. His first book, a biography of the composer Michael Tippett, was a Book of the Year in the Observer, Times Literary Supplement and Spectator. It was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize and won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Storytelling. Soden's essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Guardian, Literary Review and Art Newspaper. He grew up in Bath and Sussex, and lives in London.