While historiography is dominated by attempts that try to standardize and de-individualize the
behavior of animals history proves to be littered with records of the exceptional lives of
unusual animals. This book introduces animal biography as an approach to the re-framing of
animals as both objects of knowledge as well as subjects of individual lives. Taking an
interdisciplinary perspective and bringing together scholars from among others literary
historical and cultural studies the texts collected in this volume seek to refine animal
biography as a research method and framework to studying capturing representing and
acknowledging animal others as individuals. From Heini Hediger's biting monitor Hachik and
Murr to celluloid ape Caesar and the mourning of Topsy's gruesome death the authors discuss
how animal biographies are discovered and explored through connections with humans that can be
traced in archives ethological fieldwork and novels and probe the means of constructing
animal biographies from taxidermy to film literature and social media. Thus they invite
deeper conversations with socio-political and cultural contexts that allow animal biographies
to provide narratives that reach beyond individual life stories while experimenting with
particular forms of animal biographies that might trigger animal activism and concerns for
animal well-being spur historical interest and enrich the literary imagination.
