“Never was there so compleate a History of the Creatures as this since the daies of Solomon, who writ the Story of Beasts and Creeping things”, claims John Rowland in his dedicatory epistle to Edward Topsell’s 1658 History, which brings together his earlier work on four-footed beasts (1607) and serpents (1608). Published more than thirty years after its author’s death and considered the first major illustrated work on animals printed in English, this epic treatise on zoology exceeds a thousand pages, exploring ancient and fantastic tales of real animals, as well as those at the more legendary end of the spectrum, including the “Hydra” (with two claws, a curled serpent’s tail, and seven small mammalian heads), the “Lamia” (with a cat-like body and woman’s face and hair), and the “Mantichora” (with a lion’s body and mane, man’s face and hair, and a grotesque grin, filled with multiple rows of teeth).

Topsell was not a naturalist himself (he in fact was a clergyman) and so heavily quotes the observations of others, in particular Thomas Moffett and Konrad Gesner — the Swiss scholar from whom Topsell reproduced the book’s brilliant woodcut illustrations — who, in turn, relied on classical authorities like Aristotle, Ovid, and Pliny. On utilizing the works of others, Topsell writes: “I would not have the Reader . . . imagine I have . . . related all that is ever said of these Beasts, but only so much as is said by many”. This approach leads him to repeat some wonderful cock-and-bull stories: elephants are said to worship the sun and the moon with their own rituals, apes are terrified of snails, and “the horn of the unicorn . . . doth wonderfully help against poyson”. Although it abounds with such fanciful ideas, Topsell’s work, as John Lienhard explains, “was actually an early glimmer of modern science. For all its imperfection, it represents a vast collection of would-be observational data, and it even includes a rudimentary rule for sifting truth from supposition.”

The illustrations seem to infuse these animals with the properties that are attributed to them: the hedgehog looks positively petrified, perhaps due to its habit of drinking wine; the shrew seems to snicker, for it “beareth a cruel minde, desiring to hurt anything” (you may kill them with shovels, notes the text, or bury them as Egyptians do); and the mimick, or Getulian dog, which is said to have once called England home, appears to plot its next feat of deception. This final creature was so good at aping the behavior of humans that “in many poor mens houses they served instead of servants for diverse uses”, and were known for their capacity to put on plays, acting out several roles at once. The book’s index is almost as evocative as its illustrations — highlighting the myriad medicinal properties attributed to animals in this period — and shocks the contemporary reader at almost every turn. Choosing a letter at random, “v” points to pages on “venomous beasts driven away”, “vertigo”, “virgins breasts great”, “voice weak”, and “vomit”.

Topsell compiled his book to “delight the reader, whereinto he may look on the holiest deities”. And indeed, a sense of natural wonder — maintained for millennia — courses through this treatise. Yet much of the enchantment here is infused with “Topsell’s belief that his animals have human intrinsic worth and moral qualities as well as a hatred of mankind”, writes Helen Westhrop. Even when they lack the human expressions of Lamias and Mantichoras, the animals that come before the clergyman’s eye cannot escape their fate to serve as screens on which to project our species’ virtues as well as vices.