After gaining her BA from Hull and her D.Phil from the University of Oxford, Jane Spencer was an English lecturer for three years in Edinburgh. In 1988 she moved to the University of Exeter, where she is Professor of English. Her current research interests are in animal representation and human-animal relations in the 1660-1830 period. Her books include The Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986), Aphra Behn's Afterlife (2000) and Literary Relations: Kinship and the Canon (2005). With Karen Edwards and Derek Ryan, she is co-editor of Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern (Routledge, 2019).

There is much to admire in Jane Spencer's wide-ranging study. The breadth of reference is impressive and takes in great swathes of late eighteenth-century writing.

• 1: Introduction: Human and animal rights in the eighteenth century 2: Making an ass of yourself in narrative 3: The innovative animals of children's fiction 4: Woman and brute in feminism 5: The orang outing system: animals and abolition 6: Learned pigs: animals and the rights of man 7: The rights of beasts in the early nineteenth century Conclusion: Rights and stories

After gaining her BA from Hull and her D.Phil from the University of Oxford, Jane Spencer was an English lecturer for three years in Edinburgh. In 1988 she moved to the University of Exeter, where she is Professor of English. Her current research interests are in animal representation and human-animal relations in the 1660-1830 period. Her books include The Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986), Aphra Behn's Afterlife (2000) and Literary Relations: Kinship and the Canon (2005). With Karen Edwards and Derek Ryan, she is co-editor of Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern (Routledge, 2019).

There is much to admire in Jane Spencer's wide-ranging study. The breadth of reference is impressive and takes in great swathes of late eighteenth-century writing.

• 1: Introduction: Human and animal rights in the eighteenth century 2: Making an ass of yourself in narrative 3: The innovative animals of children's fiction 4: Woman and brute in feminism 5: The orang outing system: animals and abolition 6: Learned pigs: animals and the rights of man 7: The rights of beasts in the early nineteenth century Conclusion: Rights and stories