Penny McCarthy’s ‘Catworld’ article published by Textual Practice Journal

Detail from 9-panel grid comic page of ink drawings of cats in a variety of situations in house in Spitalfields London, illustrating William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat. Image provided by Penny McCarthy.

Penny’s visual article ‘Catworld’ has been published by the Textual Practice Journal (Taylor & Francis Routledge), and are available to view on the journal website here: Catworld 

The introduction of the full special issue ‘Animality, Performance, and Voice: William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat’ in Textual Practice Volume 37, Issue 7 (2023)‘ discusses Penny’s work in relation to the whole practice-based research project.

The article is part of a wider research project Beware the Cat that uses multiple strategies to examine William Baldwin’s satirical novel (1561).

Detail from 9-panel grid comic page of ink drawings of cats in a variety of situations in house in Spitalfields London, illustrating William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.

‘Catworld’ by Penny McCarthy

More of Penny’s images appear as marginalia in the script for Beware the Cat by Frances Babbage and Terry O’Connor. The images act as visual interventions on the page that demonstrate the way in which the original theatre performance consciously explored the power of contrasting expressive languages. Please see here for more information.

Penny McCarthy is a Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Penny is an artist and academic with a particular interest in the materiality and experience of drawing. For further information about Penny’s work, please click here.