Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat

By Oliver Soden

Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written. Prize-winning biographer Oliver Soden combines meticulous research with passages of dazzling invention to recount the life of the cat praised as 'a mixture of gravity and waggery'. The narrative roams from the theatres and bordellos of Covent Garden to the cell where Smart was imprisoned for mania. At once whimsical and profound, witty and deeply moving, Soden's biography plays with the genre like a cat with a toy. It tells the story of a poet and a poem, while setting Jeoffry's life and adventures against the roaring backdrop of eighteenth-century London.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780750995931

Reviews for Jeoffry

[cariola_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This charmingly clever little book is a fictionalized biography pf the 18th century pot Christopher Smart's cat Jeoffrey (usually spelled Geoffrey), who was celebrated in 70 lines of his best known work, "Jubilate Agno." The author provides the lines in the forward to the book. We don't know much about the real Jeoffrey beyond the fact that he spent many years with Smart in the insane asylum where he had been committed for public displays of extreme--and extremely loud--religious fervor and insisting that passersby kneel with him in prayer. He also suffered from fits, but it's unclear whether these were due to his mental condition or possibly to epilepsy. Some experts today believe that Smart may have been bipolar, due to the sequences of manic and depressive behavior.Oliver Sodon imagines Jeoffrey as a large orange tabby with a white bib who was brought to Smart by an asylum employee who thought that having the company of a cat might help to calm him. But he also gives him a colorful prior life in the city of London. Born in a cupboard in a brothel, he was the darling of Nancy, one of the working girls, until a police raid forced him out on the streets. There, he encounters many adventures and meets a number of celebrities of the day, including Samuel Johnson's cat Hodge. Sodon gives us a colorful account of London life along the way and a detailed account of conditions in the asylum for both Jeoffrey and his master. After Smart's death, he retires to a comfortable life in the countryside for the rest of his days.If you love cats or the Jeoffrey section of "Jubilate Agno," you will surely enjoy this little gem.