Animal history

The Box Office Bears team share some news about recent publications and the announcement of our forthcoming monograph, Box Office Bears: Bears and Baiting in Early Modern England.

In July, the Box Office Bears team visited Wildwood Trust in Kent. Wildwood has three rescued captive bears, who are living new lives in a large, wooded enclosure at the Trust.

I have frequently been asked when I talk about the BOB project, “did the bears hibernate”? We can answer this question in two ways: by looking at what we know about modern bears, and by looking at archival accounts.

What did pet dogs look like and how were they described?  Although the idea of a “pet” does not quite exist in this period, this list contains detailed descriptions of a wide range of Elizabethan dogs owned by men and women of the age.