Mini-Review: The Council of Dogs

 Most of my books are in boxes, so I am reading the various odds-and-sods I’ve downloaded on my kindle. The Council of Dogs is one I downloaded from Project Gutenberg. There it was listed as anonymous, other places it’s listed as by William Roscoe.

Roscoe’s poem for children The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast, about a posh party for insects was a publishing sensation for Elizabeth Newbery, the wife of John Newbery’s nephew, Francis (not to be confused with John’s son Francis, also a publisher). The company was then clearly in the market for similar works my favourite titles being, The Horse’s Levee and The Lobster’s voyage to the Brazils. 

The Council of Dogs seems to be one of these works ‘inspired’ by The Butterfly’s Ball and I think it is probably correct to ascribe it to an anonymous author, rather than William Roscoe himself. It was actually published by John Harris, Elizabeth’s successor but retains that Newbery brand by declaring it is printed at ‘the original juvenile library at the corner of St Paul’s Churchyard’, just as John Newbery did. It’s also illustrated with a number of very detailed and charming engravings of the dogs at their council.

The council is called by the sheep-dog, who wonders why their kind haven’t been enshrined by poetry, given their usefulness, beauty and skills. The various dogs then boast about all the things they can do and occasionally snap at each other. In the end, they decide to all work together and petition Apollo for a poem of their own, wagging their tails at the good job done for the day.

The pleasure of the book is from the characterisation of the dogs. There’s the zippy greyhound, boasting of his speed, the aristocratic spaniel claiming his blue-blood and the various hunting dogs declaring their skills and usefulness. At one point a Highland terrier yaps his way in, trying to boast of his hunting ability with rats and mice. He’s dismayed when they other dogs dismiss his claims by saying he only does what a cat does.

There are less fortunate dogs as well. A turnspit dog tries to make a claim for his usefulness but the other dogs inform him that his job has been taken by mechanical jacks, and that the life of a turnspit dog wasn’t much to boast about anyway. Then there all the specialist European breeds that are unable to cross the channel due to the Napoleonic wars. There’s a mongrel who works as a seeing-eye dog, something I didn’t know was common in 1808.

It’s a pleasant little book and a lovely celebration of our slobbering friends but it’s probably more interesting as an example of how the post-Newbery company ‘at the corner of St Paul’s Churchyard” chased trends.