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“Hen Fever”, as it became known during the Victorian Age, was an unprecedented obsession with owning,\u00a0breeding, and showing the finest chickens in the world. The genesis of the\u00a0poultry fancier owes much to Queen Victoria and her royal menagerie. In 1842, she acquired exotic chickens from China, and whatever the Queen did, the public would soon try to\u00a0imitate and incorporate at home. The Illustrated London News<\/strong> reported “Her Majesty\u2019s collection of fowls is very considerable, occupying half-a-dozen very extensive yards, several small fields, and numerous feeding-houses, laying-sheds, hospitals, winter courts, &c.”. <\/em>From this\u00a0point forward, poultry was no longer viewed as\u00a0common\u00a0farmyard critters, but\u00a0valued and appreciated\u00a0throughout the classes of\u00a0Victorian Britain. The import and breeding of poultry was not just a leisurely hobby, but a profitable endeavor with sky rocketing price tags for the finest examples. British author,\u00a0Lewis Wright was a poultry, pigeon, and animal expert. His comprehensive publications on poultry played\u00a0a major part in establishing and documenting rare breeds of poultry and tracing\u00a0their histories, as well as promoting the\u00a0fancier\u00a0movement. His landmark publication, The Illustrated Book of Poultry,\u00a0<\/em>was so popular that it was revised and reprinted several times from 1870-1911. In addition to extensive descriptions, setting show standards,\u00a0and offering instructions on keeping and breeding, this large tome also included numerous chromolithographs by ornithological artist, J.W. Ludlow. These illustrations, followed the example\u00a0of Audubon, where the birds were portrayed in natural settings and poses. Poultry fanciers in Britain and U.S. valued the images just as much as the\u00a0encyclopedic information.<\/p>\n “The introduction of these fowls, as we have already hinted, was a memorable event in the history of poultry; since they undoubtedly awakened that startling \u201cmania\u201d which was, calmly considered, one of the most curious phenomena of the nineteenth century, and which, after it died away, left behind it an enduring interest in poultry generally, which nothing has since been able to destroy. Scarcely any people at that time kept fowls ; and as for the few poultry-shows which,\u00a0even then timidly endeavoured to attract the attention of a discerning public, they were regarded as the harmless craze of a few weak-minded individuals, looked upon in those days much as a man would be now who should devote his spare time and energies to the cultivation, of white mice. But the Cochins came like giants upon the scene; they were seen, and they conquered.”<\/em><\/p>\n “So begun, and so carried on, it has been of course a labour of love. The work has been great; but it has been pleasant work, lovingly and heartily done, and shared in by nearly all those best known in the poultry world. Without their aid we could have done little; but every one has brought his stone to the building. Never has such a mass of information, contributed by the best authorities in the \u201c fancy,\u201d been brought together; and birds which no money could purchase have been freely entrusted to us for portraiture.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Hen Fever”, as it became known during the Victorian Age, was an unprecedented obsession with owning,\u00a0breeding, and showing the finest chickens in the world. The genesis of the\u00a0poultry fancier owes much to Queen Victoria and her royal menagerie. In 1842, she acquired exotic chickens from China, and whatever the Queen did, the public would soon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2559,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4120,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions\/4120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
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