The Great Grisby

I enjoyed reading Mikita Brottman's book of essays, The Great Grisby: Two Thousand Years of Literary, Royal, Philosophical, and Artistic Dog Lovers and Their Exceptional Animals (#445) so much that I've already bought a copy for a friend's upcoming birthday.  And I won't be giving it back to my library group after talking about it next month!  This one is definitely finding a permanent home on my bookshelf.  Did I mention that I am not, nor have I ever been, a dog owner myself?  It's that appealing to a book lover.

Ms. Brottman's own French bulldog is the Great Grisby of the title, with a charming picture of him seated on a pedestal adorning the cover.  She has divided her book into Chapters A - Z, each essay devoted to a different dog whose name begins with the appropriate letter.  None of your super-celebrity animals are included here, but you'll recognize most of the owners: Sigmund Freud, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Richard Wagner and Bill Sikes (from Oliver Twist) among them.  That dog is just the jumping off point for many interesting and convoluted wanderings among a myriad of dog-related facts and fables, always with a meditation on the life and times of the author's own dog, Grisby.

She's also included extensive Notes, and even better, to my mind, a Bibliography which just begs to be explored further.  I'm going to have to find a Willa Cather short story I've never read, and look more closely at Edith Wharton's House of Mirth.  I also want to spend some time online to see if I can find images of the many paintings Ms. Brottman references which contain portraits of a number of the dogs included in her essays.  What a delightful prospect!  This book is truly the gift that keeps on giving.