Learned pig
Encyclopedia
The learned pig was a pig taught to respond to commands in such a way that it appeared to be able to answer questions by picking up cards in its mouth. By choosing cards it answered arithmetical problems and spelled out words. The "learned pig" caused a sensation in London during the 1780s. It became a common object of satire, illustrated in caricatures and referred to in literature.
The original "learned pig" was followed by other trained pigs, which subsequently became a feature of fairs and other public attractions in Europe and America during the 19th century. In the words of G.E. Bentley, "They served as subjects for cartoons by Rowlandson and moral essays in children's books and savage doggerel by Blake, and they illustrated the manners of the English in works by Joseph Strutt and Robert Southey and Thomas Hood. These freaks of learning clearly exercised a fascination among the literary geniuses of the age as they did among the swinish multitude."
the thinking horse" (c.1586–c.1606) had been exhibited over a century earlier; there were also contemporary examples of the "horse of knowledge", exhibited for example at Astley's Amphitheatre
. But performing horses were nothing unusual. No performing pigs are known to have been trained before.
The pig was shown with great success in Dublin. After Bisset's death the pig was taken over by a Mr Nicholson, who toured it in Britain. It was exhibited in Nottingham in 1784, coming to London in the following year." According to publicity at the time,
The show was a great success, and the pig later toured the provincial towns, returning to London later in the year and then moving on to the continent of Europe. After a career of four years a report stated that the pig died in 1788. However, a later report claimed that it had just returned from France following the revolution of 1789, and was ready to "discourse on the Feudal System, the Rights of Kings and the Destruction of the Bastille".
The phenomenon caused much comment. James Boswell
recalls conversations with Samuel Johnson
in which he joked about the pig's scholarship. Johnson never saw the pig. He died just before it came to London, but he commented on a report of its show in Nottingham. He suggested that "the pigs are a race unjustly calumniated. Pig has, it seems, not been wanting to man, but man to pig. We do not allow time for his education, we kill him at a year old." Another man present joked that Alexander Pope
would not have used the pig as a symbol of "the lowest degree of grovelling instinct" in his works if this creature had been known to him, but added that the pig had probably been subject to some form of torture to force it to respond to commands. Johnson replied that at least it had escaped slaughter "the pig has no cause to complain; he would have been killed the first year if he had not been educated, and protracted existence is a good recompence for very considerable degrees of torture."
The discussion about how the pig had been trained also led to disputes about the cognitive abilities of pigs; whether the animal actually recognised letters or even words, or whether it was simply responding to direct prompting. The phenomenon was also discussed in instructional literature aimed at children, to describe the essential difference between human and animal capacities and to warn against cruelty to animals, on the assumption that the pigs were badly beaten by their trainers to force them to behave.
. He claimed to have toured all the major towns of the Union and introduced the pig to President John Adams
, to "univeral applause". Pinchbeck later explained his methods of training the pig in a pamphlet. He denied that any form of torture was involved, insisting that the it was better to "coax" the pig to follow instructions. The animal would soon learn to respond to the slightest hints of movement from the trainer. He stated that credulous spectators accused him of using witchcraft, one stating that "his performances were the effects of the Black Art; that the Pig ought to be burnt, and the Man banished, as he had no doubt but...[his trainer] familiarly corresponded with the devil." Others suggested that the pig was evidence of reincarnation, "the spirit of the grunting philosopher might once have animated a man."
In the early 19th century, Nicholas Hoare, an illusionist, exhibited "Toby the sapient pig" in London. Toby could "discover a person’s thoughts", a skill "never heard of before to be exhibited by an animal of the swine race". Around 1817 Toby also published an autobiography, The life and adventures of Toby, the sapient pig: with his opinions on men and manners. Written by himself.
A pig owned by Pinchbeck was shown in London between 1818 and 1823. According to his publicity, the pig had acquired his wisdom from "Souchanguyee, the Chinese Philosopher." He answered questions by "pointing to cards, letters, and persons in the audience."
"Toby" became a standard name for a learned pig. The writer Harrison Weir depicts a learned pig called Toby, which he saw "year ago at Camberwell Fair" for a penny. According to Harrison, the pig carried a correctly numbered card to a person who had called out a number; it spelled "vittels," and then it left to have some, "with a joyful grunt, and the show was over."
published a caricature of "The Wonderful Pig" in 1785, in which the pig is shown dispaying his erudition to a crowd of amazed ladies and gentlemen. A placard states "The Surprising PIG well versed in all Languages, perfect Arethmatician Mathematician & Composer of Musick."
Other caricatures used the appeal of the pig to poke fun at theatrical fads of the day. The Theatrical War satirises the actor-impressario John Palmer
, dressed in Shakespearean costume, being threatened by other attractions including the pig.
The 1784 print The Downfall of Taste and Genius, or, The World As it Goes by Samuel Collings ridicules "the taste that prefers the Dancing Dogs, the Learned Pig, and Harlequin to Shakespeare". This was a "recurrent theme" of prints at the time. The print depicts the pig leading a procession of performing animals who knock over figures representing the fine arts while copies of Shakespeare's and Pope's works are trampled underfoot by the animals.
An anonymous print entitled "The Wonderful Pig of Knowledge" shows a pig performing in a parlour apparently engaged in spelling the word "PORC[INE]"
Politicians were also satirised by being compared to the pig. William Pitt
was referred to as "the Wonderful Pig" on several occasions. One satirical print showed Pitt with the body of a pig; the caption asserted that among his powers was the ability to explain recent Acts of Parliament, a feat "before never having been even attempted in these our realms!!!" In one print Pitt and his opponent Charles James Fox
were both depicted as competing learned pigs.
lamented that his fame had been unfavourably compared to both the pig and a notoriously promiscuous actress, Anne Bellamy
. A poem published in 1785 referred to the fact that the pig had arrived in London just after Johnson's death,
The anonymous pamphlet The Story of the Learned Pig, By an officer of the Royal Navy (1786) picked up the theme of reincarnation. This presents itself as the personal reminiscences of the pig, as told to the author. He describes himself as a soul that has successively migrated from the body of Romulus
into various humans and animals before becoming the Learned Pig. He recalls his previous incarnations. After Romulus he became Brutus
, and then entered several human and animal bodies. Adapting the Shakespeare theme, the pamphlet states that he became a man called "Pimping Billy", who worked as a horse-holder at a playhouse with Shakespeare and was the real author of his plays. He then became a famous British aristocrat and general — identified only by asterisks — before entering the body of a pig.
Puns on the name "Bacon", referring to the philosopher Francis Bacon
, also appeared in the literature. In the poem "The Prophetic Pig", in The Whim of the Day (c.1794) a believer in reincarnation states, "I can easily trace...A metempsychosis in this pig's face!...And in transmigration, if I'm not mistaken,/This learned pig must be, by consanguinity,/Descended from the great Lord Bacon." Thomas Hood
's poem The Lament of Toby, The Learned Pig also uses the Bacon pun, adding another on the poet James Hogg
. He describes the thoughts of a learned pig forced to retire from his intellectual pursuits to be fattened for slaughter. The pig says "Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!/The philosophic Bacon!":
William Blake
attacked debased public taste in a poem dedicated to the artist James Barry
, writing that the nation which neglected Barry might "give pensions to the Learned Pig / Or the Hare playing on a Tabor". He also alludes to it in his satire An Island in the Moon
. In 1807 Robert Southey
parodied the contrast between real genius and meretricious celebrity by referring to the pig, noting that "the learned pig was in his day a far greater object of admiration to the English nation than ever was Sir Isaac Newton." William Wordsworth
refers to the pig in The Prelude
, describing it as one of the "freaks of nature" to be seen at Bartholomew Fair
:
The pig continued to be a common reference point for writers, mentioned by Mary Wollstonecraft
and Charles Dickens
among others. In The Mudfog Papers
Dickens describes a moving lecture given at the Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything by Mr Blunderum on the dying moments of the learned pig. The lecturer was asked whether the learned pig was related to the Pig-faced Lady, causing embarrassment to an audience member who was related to the lady, but who refused to admit a family connection to the learned pig.
Even Mrs Beeton
begins her recipe for cooking sucking pig with the observation that pigs are capable of "education" "and though, like the ass, naturally stubborn and obstinate, that he is equally amenable with other animals to caresses and kindness". This is proven by "the instance of the learned pig, first exhibited about a century since, but which has been continued down to our own time by repeated instances of an animal who will put together all the letters or figures that compose the day, month, hour and date of the exhibition, besides many other unquestioned evidences of memory."
Most recently, the "Learned Pig" has made a reappearance of sorts in popular culture; in 2003 he was the subject of a song, "The Learned Pig," which was part of a concept concert and recording by the UK band the Tiger Lillies
, based on a poem by Edward Gorey
; in 2011 there appeared a novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig, by Russell Potter
, based on the career of the original "Toby". (ISBN 0857862405)
The original "learned pig" was followed by other trained pigs, which subsequently became a feature of fairs and other public attractions in Europe and America during the 19th century. In the words of G.E. Bentley, "They served as subjects for cartoons by Rowlandson and moral essays in children's books and savage doggerel by Blake, and they illustrated the manners of the English in works by Joseph Strutt and Robert Southey and Thomas Hood. These freaks of learning clearly exercised a fascination among the literary geniuses of the age as they did among the swinish multitude."
The original pig
The original Learned Pig was trained by a Scotsman Samuel Bisset, who ran a travelling novelty show. The idea of an "intellectual" animal was not new. A similar attraction known as "MaroccoMarocco
Marocco , widely known as Bankes's Horse , was the name of a late 16th- and early 17th-century English performing horse...
the thinking horse" (c.1586–c.1606) had been exhibited over a century earlier; there were also contemporary examples of the "horse of knowledge", exhibited for example at Astley's Amphitheatre
Astley's Amphitheatre
Philip Astley opened Astley's Amphitheatre in London in 1773. * The structure was burned in 1794, then rebuilt. With increasing prosperity and rebuilding after successive fires, it grew to become Astley's Royal Amphitheatre and this was the home of the circus...
. But performing horses were nothing unusual. No performing pigs are known to have been trained before.
The pig was shown with great success in Dublin. After Bisset's death the pig was taken over by a Mr Nicholson, who toured it in Britain. It was exhibited in Nottingham in 1784, coming to London in the following year." According to publicity at the time,
This entertaining and sagacious animal casts accounts by means of Typographical cards, in the same manner as a Printer composes, and by the same method sets down any capital or Surname, reckons the number of People present, tells by evoking on a Gentleman's Watch in company what is the Hour and Minutes; he likewise tells any Lady's Thoughts in company, and distinguishes all sorts of colours.
The show was a great success, and the pig later toured the provincial towns, returning to London later in the year and then moving on to the continent of Europe. After a career of four years a report stated that the pig died in 1788. However, a later report claimed that it had just returned from France following the revolution of 1789, and was ready to "discourse on the Feudal System, the Rights of Kings and the Destruction of the Bastille".
The phenomenon caused much comment. James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
recalls conversations with Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
in which he joked about the pig's scholarship. Johnson never saw the pig. He died just before it came to London, but he commented on a report of its show in Nottingham. He suggested that "the pigs are a race unjustly calumniated. Pig has, it seems, not been wanting to man, but man to pig. We do not allow time for his education, we kill him at a year old." Another man present joked that Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
would not have used the pig as a symbol of "the lowest degree of grovelling instinct" in his works if this creature had been known to him, but added that the pig had probably been subject to some form of torture to force it to respond to commands. Johnson replied that at least it had escaped slaughter "the pig has no cause to complain; he would have been killed the first year if he had not been educated, and protracted existence is a good recompence for very considerable degrees of torture."
The discussion about how the pig had been trained also led to disputes about the cognitive abilities of pigs; whether the animal actually recognised letters or even words, or whether it was simply responding to direct prompting. The phenomenon was also discussed in instructional literature aimed at children, to describe the essential difference between human and animal capacities and to warn against cruelty to animals, on the assumption that the pigs were badly beaten by their trainers to force them to behave.
Later pigs
In 1798 a learned pig appeared in the United States. William Frederick Pinchbeck displayed a "Pig of Knowledge" in New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. He claimed to have toured all the major towns of the Union and introduced the pig to President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
, to "univeral applause". Pinchbeck later explained his methods of training the pig in a pamphlet. He denied that any form of torture was involved, insisting that the it was better to "coax" the pig to follow instructions. The animal would soon learn to respond to the slightest hints of movement from the trainer. He stated that credulous spectators accused him of using witchcraft, one stating that "his performances were the effects of the Black Art; that the Pig ought to be burnt, and the Man banished, as he had no doubt but...[his trainer] familiarly corresponded with the devil." Others suggested that the pig was evidence of reincarnation, "the spirit of the grunting philosopher might once have animated a man."
In the early 19th century, Nicholas Hoare, an illusionist, exhibited "Toby the sapient pig" in London. Toby could "discover a person’s thoughts", a skill "never heard of before to be exhibited by an animal of the swine race". Around 1817 Toby also published an autobiography, The life and adventures of Toby, the sapient pig: with his opinions on men and manners. Written by himself.
A pig owned by Pinchbeck was shown in London between 1818 and 1823. According to his publicity, the pig had acquired his wisdom from "Souchanguyee, the Chinese Philosopher." He answered questions by "pointing to cards, letters, and persons in the audience."
"Toby" became a standard name for a learned pig. The writer Harrison Weir depicts a learned pig called Toby, which he saw "year ago at Camberwell Fair" for a penny. According to Harrison, the pig carried a correctly numbered card to a person who had called out a number; it spelled "vittels," and then it left to have some, "with a joyful grunt, and the show was over."
Caricature
The original learned pig inspired a large number of satirical comments and comic prints. Thomas RowlandsonThomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist.- Biography :Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was the son of a tradesman or city merchant. On leaving school he became a student at the Royal Academy...
published a caricature of "The Wonderful Pig" in 1785, in which the pig is shown dispaying his erudition to a crowd of amazed ladies and gentlemen. A placard states "The Surprising PIG well versed in all Languages, perfect Arethmatician Mathematician & Composer of Musick."
Other caricatures used the appeal of the pig to poke fun at theatrical fads of the day. The Theatrical War satirises the actor-impressario John Palmer
John Palmer (actor)
John Palmer was one of the most highly-regarded actors on the English stage in the eighteenth century.-Birth and youth:He was born in the parish of St Luke's, Old Street, London, about 1742, was son of a private soldier...
, dressed in Shakespearean costume, being threatened by other attractions including the pig.
The 1784 print The Downfall of Taste and Genius, or, The World As it Goes by Samuel Collings ridicules "the taste that prefers the Dancing Dogs, the Learned Pig, and Harlequin to Shakespeare". This was a "recurrent theme" of prints at the time. The print depicts the pig leading a procession of performing animals who knock over figures representing the fine arts while copies of Shakespeare's and Pope's works are trampled underfoot by the animals.
An anonymous print entitled "The Wonderful Pig of Knowledge" shows a pig performing in a parlour apparently engaged in spelling the word "PORC[INE]"
Politicians were also satirised by being compared to the pig. William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
was referred to as "the Wonderful Pig" on several occasions. One satirical print showed Pitt with the body of a pig; the caption asserted that among his powers was the ability to explain recent Acts of Parliament, a feat "before never having been even attempted in these our realms!!!" In one print Pitt and his opponent Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
were both depicted as competing learned pigs.
Literature
The concept of the "learned pig" became a common motif in satirical literature by the late 18th century, playing on the implied contrast between gross physicality and intellectual superiority. The poet William CowperWilliam Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
lamented that his fame had been unfavourably compared to both the pig and a notoriously promiscuous actress, Anne Bellamy
George Anne Bellamy
George Anne Bellamy was an English actress. She was born, by her own account, at Fingal, Ireland. "George Anne" was a name given by mistake for Georgiana, who was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Tyrawley and was educated by him. Choosing, however, to live with her mother, she made the...
. A poem published in 1785 referred to the fact that the pig had arrived in London just after Johnson's death,
- Though Johnson, learned Bear, is gone,
- Let us no longer mourn our loss,
- For lo, a learned Hog is come,
- And wisdom grunts at Charing Cross.
The anonymous pamphlet The Story of the Learned Pig, By an officer of the Royal Navy (1786) picked up the theme of reincarnation. This presents itself as the personal reminiscences of the pig, as told to the author. He describes himself as a soul that has successively migrated from the body of Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...
into various humans and animals before becoming the Learned Pig. He recalls his previous incarnations. After Romulus he became Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus , often referred to as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic. After being adopted by his uncle he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, but eventually returned to using his original name...
, and then entered several human and animal bodies. Adapting the Shakespeare theme, the pamphlet states that he became a man called "Pimping Billy", who worked as a horse-holder at a playhouse with Shakespeare and was the real author of his plays. He then became a famous British aristocrat and general — identified only by asterisks — before entering the body of a pig.
Puns on the name "Bacon", referring to the philosopher Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, also appeared in the literature. In the poem "The Prophetic Pig", in The Whim of the Day (c.1794) a believer in reincarnation states, "I can easily trace...A metempsychosis in this pig's face!...And in transmigration, if I'm not mistaken,/This learned pig must be, by consanguinity,/Descended from the great Lord Bacon." Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
's poem The Lament of Toby, The Learned Pig also uses the Bacon pun, adding another on the poet James Hogg
James Hogg
James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...
. He describes the thoughts of a learned pig forced to retire from his intellectual pursuits to be fattened for slaughter. The pig says "Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!/The philosophic Bacon!":
- In this world, pigs, as well as men,
- Must dance to fortune's fiddlings,
- But must I give the classics up,
- For barley-meal and middlings?
William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
attacked debased public taste in a poem dedicated to the artist James Barry
James Barry (painter)
James Barry , Irish painter, best remembered for his six part series of paintings entitled The Progress of Human Culture in the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts...
, writing that the nation which neglected Barry might "give pensions to the Learned Pig / Or the Hare playing on a Tabor". He also alludes to it in his satire An Island in the Moon
An Island in the Moon
An Island in the Moon is the name generally assigned to an untitled, unfinished prose satire by William Blake, written in late 1784. Containing early versions of three poems later included in Songs of Innocence and satirising the "contrived and empty productions of the contemporary culture", An...
. In 1807 Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
parodied the contrast between real genius and meretricious celebrity by referring to the pig, noting that "the learned pig was in his day a far greater object of admiration to the English nation than ever was Sir Isaac Newton." William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
refers to the pig in The Prelude
The Prelude
The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind is an autobiographical, "philosophical" poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he was 28, and worked over the rest of it for his long life without publishing it...
, describing it as one of the "freaks of nature" to be seen at Bartholomew Fair
Bartholomew Fair
Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy is a comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson, the last written of his four great comedies. It was first staged on October 31, 1614 at the Hope Theatre by the Lady Elizabeth's Men...
:
- ...Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
- The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig
- All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
- All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
- Of man, his dulness, madness, and their feats
- All jumbled up together, to compose
- A Parliament of Monsters.
The pig continued to be a common reference point for writers, mentioned by Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
and Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
among others. In The Mudfog Papers
The Mudfog Papers
The Mudfog Papers was written by Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens and published from 1837–38 in the monthly literary serial Bentley's Miscellany, which he then edited....
Dickens describes a moving lecture given at the Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything by Mr Blunderum on the dying moments of the learned pig. The lecturer was asked whether the learned pig was related to the Pig-faced Lady, causing embarrassment to an audience member who was related to the lady, but who refused to admit a family connection to the learned pig.
Even Mrs Beeton
Mrs Beeton
Isabella Mary Beeton , universally known as Mrs Beeton, was the English author of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, and is one of the most famous cookery writers.-Background:...
begins her recipe for cooking sucking pig with the observation that pigs are capable of "education" "and though, like the ass, naturally stubborn and obstinate, that he is equally amenable with other animals to caresses and kindness". This is proven by "the instance of the learned pig, first exhibited about a century since, but which has been continued down to our own time by repeated instances of an animal who will put together all the letters or figures that compose the day, month, hour and date of the exhibition, besides many other unquestioned evidences of memory."
Most recently, the "Learned Pig" has made a reappearance of sorts in popular culture; in 2003 he was the subject of a song, "The Learned Pig," which was part of a concept concert and recording by the UK band the Tiger Lillies
Tiger Lillies
The Tiger Lillies are a three-piece band, formed in 1989 and based in London. They have toured worldwide and won acclaim with their opera Shockheaded Peter....
, based on a poem by Edward Gorey
Edward Gorey
Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.-Early life:...
; in 2011 there appeared a novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig, by Russell Potter
Russell Potter
Russell A. Potter is an American writer and college professor. His work encompasses Hip hop culture, popular music, and the history of British exploration of the Arctic in the nineteenth century...
, based on the career of the original "Toby". (ISBN 0857862405)