Humans, Animals, and U.S. Society in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Documentary History

Volume I traces the significance of animals, and the "problem" of animality, within the currents of U.S. social and scientific thought during a period marked by a rapid expansion of American and transatlantic print culture. It provides insights into how evolving ideas about animal intelligence, sociality, morality, and language interacted with contemporary notions of human nature in ways that could be mobilised both to defend and to challenge traditional claims to human uniqueness and rigid distinctions between human and animal life.