Shaggy Muses

The shocking largesse of Leona Helmsley, the late real estate baroness who bestowed $12 million on her Maltese named Trouble, makes us reckon with how much our dogs are worth. Presumably, these creatures don't know shinola from s***. Yet, many of us believe our dogs are priceless.

The writers Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edith Wharton penned their best work while in the company of priceless hounds. In "Shaggy Muses," author Maureen Adams does a marvelous job of showing how the dogs made a difference in the creative lives of these women.

We learn, for instance, that Emily Bronte, who wrote the dark "Wuthering Heights," beat her mastiff Keeper bloody when he dared to sleep on the indoor beds. Wharton, in her later years, was daffy for her Pekinese Linky to the point where this devotion offended friends and colleagues. Woolf grieved deeply for her spaniel, so much so the death may have hastened her own demise.

"Shaggy Muses" is written with scholarly care and style. Dog Lady, who derives sustenance from her own shaggy muse in her modest creative pursuits, could not put this down.

Posted by Dog Lady at September 3, 2007 12:26 PM