Pets & their People - Bodleian Library exhibition

About the exhibition

We have been domesticating animals for over ten thousand years. But why do we want tame wolves in our homes or wild cats on our laps?

This exhibition explores the relationship between humans and their pets – or pets and their humans.

Pets & their People draws on depictions of pets in stories, imagery and poetry in the Bodleian's collection – from one of the earliest recorded depictions of an assistance dog for the blind to a rare copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that has never been displayed in the UK before. The exhibition asks how the special bond between owners and their pets has evolved over time, and what that evolution tells us about who we really are.

Are we taming our pets, or are they bringing us back to our wild roots?

There are a couple of Tolkien items in the Bodleian’s new Pets & Their People exhibition, on until 27 September in the Weston Library, and, as always, free admission. The first page of a draft typescript of Roverandom and Tolkien’s watercolour illustration for the story. Both are reproduced in Catherine McIlwaine’s Maker of Middle Earth (pp. 263-265). MS. Tolkien Drawings 89, fol. 2 (the watercolour) and MS. Tolkien B 64/1, fol. 2 (the draft).