Part of the joy of researching books is the dive back in time and discover ideas now very different from our own.  My research shows that book-sellers class this as a children’s book.    Hmm, apart from the first paragraph where I could imagine various Hons in the Hons cupboard in floods of tears: 

“I have lost, within these last few days, a little bulldog.  He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence.  He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.”

..Pass the tissues!

However, if today’s child was given this book they would feel very hard done by!  The beautiful illustrations by Cecil Aldin might hold their attention for a while but, I would class it as a charming treatise on the human condition set as a child’s story for adults.  Maeterlinck uses man’s relationship with the dog as a comparison to man’s relationship to God.   I think most modern readers would struggle with the idea of seeing oneself as master/God to a dog but it does give insight to how people in the past viewed their relationship to animals.  The choice of using an adult voice to tell a story to ‘children’ underlines this theme.  The writing is masterful, and if the original was in French, there is no indication of who translated the text.

As to the author (and this is taken from Wikipedia)

“The author Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), (also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932), was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. In later life, Maeterlinck faced credible accusations of plagiarism.”

Printed in 1913, hard cover.  By George Allen and Company, Ltd (Ruskin House) the book is in good condition for its age and is a  perfect addition to the shelves of any collector.

The five beautiful colour illustrations by Cecil Aldin protected by tissue paper which add to the attractiveness of this book.