Wild Animals I Have Known

At about the same time at the great American writer Jack London, English-born Ernest Seton-Thompson was making a name for himself as another of the early originators of the animal fiction genre. Wild Animals I Have Known, published in 1898, is his most famous and popular work and is a collection of short stories that gives animals — including those commonly demonized — humanistic emotions, often sympathetically. This work, along with others like it, set off what would become known as the nature fakers controversy, when leading artists and literary figures — and even President Roosevelt — clashed over “sentimental” depictions of animals.