What do you think?
Rate this book
The Fireside Sphinx: A Cultural History of Cats
Cats, cats, cats. Long before they became the defining meme of the Internet, Agnes Repplier wrote down the long history of the feline in Western culture.
In this illustrated text, designed for today's e-reading device, Agnes Repplier takes the reader on a journey from ancient Egypt to the nunneries of Medieval Europe. She describes the horrors that befell the cat in Europe during the witch trials and their eventual redemption and adulation from artists and authors. Within these pages you will find the stories of such noted felines as Puss-In-Boots, Dick Whittington, and the king of cats. You will also meet the pets of Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, M Gautier, Matthew Arnold and Dr. Johnson.
Celebrate the rich feline history of Europe with this engaging and well-researched cultural snapshot of our love affair with our tabbies, tomcats and pretty kitties.
This edition of THE FIRESIDE SPHINX has been proofed against the original edition of the work and formatted specifically for Amazon's family of Kindle readers.
Called the “Jane Austen of the essay” by the New York Times, Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) was one of the most admired and widely published writers of the early part of the twentieth century. During her life she was considered one of the “Big Four” American women writers alongside Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amy Lowell. The author of over two dozen books, Ms. Repplier also published over 400 essays for The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, Life, Appleton’s Magazine, McClure’s, Harper’s Bazaar, Commonweal, Century Magazine, The Yale Review, and Catholic World.
In this illustrated text, designed for today's e-reading device, Agnes Repplier takes the reader on a journey from ancient Egypt to the nunneries of Medieval Europe. She describes the horrors that befell the cat in Europe during the witch trials and their eventual redemption and adulation from artists and authors. Within these pages you will find the stories of such noted felines as Puss-In-Boots, Dick Whittington, and the king of cats. You will also meet the pets of Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, M Gautier, Matthew Arnold and Dr. Johnson.
Celebrate the rich feline history of Europe with this engaging and well-researched cultural snapshot of our love affair with our tabbies, tomcats and pretty kitties.
This edition of THE FIRESIDE SPHINX has been proofed against the original edition of the work and formatted specifically for Amazon's family of Kindle readers.
Called the “Jane Austen of the essay” by the New York Times, Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) was one of the most admired and widely published writers of the early part of the twentieth century. During her life she was considered one of the “Big Four” American women writers alongside Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amy Lowell. The author of over two dozen books, Ms. Repplier also published over 400 essays for The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, Life, Appleton’s Magazine, McClure’s, Harper’s Bazaar, Commonweal, Century Magazine, The Yale Review, and Catholic World.
- GenresCats
278 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1901
3 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Agnes Repplier
114 books18 followersAmerican essayist. Educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Eden Hall at Torresdale, Philadelphia, and later at the Agnes Irwin School. Repplier was reportedly expelled from two schools for "independent behaviour" and illiterate until the age of ten. She received mentoring in writing by a nun who was herself a noted writer, Mary Paulina Finn, who published books, poetry and plays under the pseudonym M. S. Pine.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2026
In The Fireside Sphinx (1901), Agnes Repplier attempts to do for the feline what she did for William Penn: craft a narrative of "innate spirit" and "unchanging character" that conveniently ignores the material conditions of history. While her prose is as elegant and witty as ever, Repplier treats the cat as a mystical, autonomous aristocrat rather than a biological entity shaped by human economic systems.
Repplier traces the cat’s journey from Egyptian deity to Medieval "demon" to the modern "aristocrat of the fireside." Her central thesis is that the cat is an "unconquered spirit"—the only animal that has shared our homes without surrendering its soul. To Repplier, the cat is a mirror of human refinement; only a truly civilized society (like her own Victorian elite) can appreciate a creature that offers companionship without servitude.
Reading this in 2026, Repplier’s "idealist" history falls apart under a dialectical materialist lens. She mistakes biological evolution and economic utility for "spiritual independence."
The Economic Basis of "Worship": Repplier spends chapters on the "divinity" of the Egyptian cat. A materialist analysis reveals the truth: cats were protected and "worshipped" because they were the primary defense for the state’s surplus grain stores. The "god" was a functional component of the Egyptian mode of production. Their "sanctity" was a legal superstructure designed to protect a vital agricultural asset.
The Cat as Bourgeois Status Symbol: Repplier’s "Fireside Sphinx" is an explicitly unproductive animal. In the 19th century, owning a creature that "does no work" became a powerful signifier of class status. By framing the cat’s refusal to work as "noble independence," Repplier is actually romanticizing the leisure of the bourgeoisie. The cat becomes a proxy for the owner’s own distance from manual labor.
Erasure of Domestication as Labor: Modern science in 2026 shows us that cats "self-domesticated" by exploiting the niches created by human settlement. Repplier ignores the biological reality of co-evolution, instead opting for a "Great Cat" theory of history that mirrors her "Great Man" theory of Philadelphia. She treats the cat’s behaviors as "mysteries" to be admired rather than traits selected for survival within a human-dominated environment.
Repplier is a magnificent writer, but she is a captive of her class. She wants the cat to be a "Sphinx"—mysterious, ancient, and untouchable—because that mystery masks the reality of how we turn nature into a commodity for our own psychological comfort.
If you want to read a book that perfectly captures the "pet hagiography" of the turn of the century, this is it. But if you want to understand the actual history of the domestic cat, you have to look past the "fireside" and into the granaries, the alleyways, and the cold hard facts of ecological and economic history.
Recommended for: Cat lovers who enjoy flowery Victorian prose and those interested in how the 19th-century elite projected their own values onto their pets.
Not recommended for: Evolutionary biologists, Marxists, or anyone who realizes that a cat sitting by a fire is a product of heating technology and surplus calories, not an "unconquered soul."
Repplier traces the cat’s journey from Egyptian deity to Medieval "demon" to the modern "aristocrat of the fireside." Her central thesis is that the cat is an "unconquered spirit"—the only animal that has shared our homes without surrendering its soul. To Repplier, the cat is a mirror of human refinement; only a truly civilized society (like her own Victorian elite) can appreciate a creature that offers companionship without servitude.
Reading this in 2026, Repplier’s "idealist" history falls apart under a dialectical materialist lens. She mistakes biological evolution and economic utility for "spiritual independence."
The Economic Basis of "Worship": Repplier spends chapters on the "divinity" of the Egyptian cat. A materialist analysis reveals the truth: cats were protected and "worshipped" because they were the primary defense for the state’s surplus grain stores. The "god" was a functional component of the Egyptian mode of production. Their "sanctity" was a legal superstructure designed to protect a vital agricultural asset.
The Cat as Bourgeois Status Symbol: Repplier’s "Fireside Sphinx" is an explicitly unproductive animal. In the 19th century, owning a creature that "does no work" became a powerful signifier of class status. By framing the cat’s refusal to work as "noble independence," Repplier is actually romanticizing the leisure of the bourgeoisie. The cat becomes a proxy for the owner’s own distance from manual labor.
Erasure of Domestication as Labor: Modern science in 2026 shows us that cats "self-domesticated" by exploiting the niches created by human settlement. Repplier ignores the biological reality of co-evolution, instead opting for a "Great Cat" theory of history that mirrors her "Great Man" theory of Philadelphia. She treats the cat’s behaviors as "mysteries" to be admired rather than traits selected for survival within a human-dominated environment.
Repplier is a magnificent writer, but she is a captive of her class. She wants the cat to be a "Sphinx"—mysterious, ancient, and untouchable—because that mystery masks the reality of how we turn nature into a commodity for our own psychological comfort.
If you want to read a book that perfectly captures the "pet hagiography" of the turn of the century, this is it. But if you want to understand the actual history of the domestic cat, you have to look past the "fireside" and into the granaries, the alleyways, and the cold hard facts of ecological and economic history.
Recommended for: Cat lovers who enjoy flowery Victorian prose and those interested in how the 19th-century elite projected their own values onto their pets.
Not recommended for: Evolutionary biologists, Marxists, or anyone who realizes that a cat sitting by a fire is a product of heating technology and surplus calories, not an "unconquered soul."
November 16, 2013
A history of the cat in western literature. What's not to love? Includes stories from around Europe. Covers history from Egyptian cat worship through the witch trials to Victor Hugo and his love for his pets.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews