The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain

This book explores the history of dog breeds, their categorization and formalization, within the origins of the concepts in Victorian culture. It will go into how breed was a different concept before then, and how the formalization is related to the emergence of Victorian dog shows. The book explores the two-fold dynamic, in how the development of “breed” was very Victorian and how in said dynamic we can identify latent aspects of Victorian culture—and to that end British culture, then and today. As “new” breeds were discovered and developed, we see the emergence of an economy around pets as well as the evolution of how people related to their pets and their pedigree in the 19th century.