Paper Tiger is an exciting new history of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger in which the reader it taken on a journey behind artists’ brushstrokes and photographers’ lenses into the world of science, printing processes, publishing entrepreneurs, circulating libraries and bounties. Using thylacine illustrations from early British and Australian zoological and natural history literature, Carol Freemen reveals how inaccurate and misleading published images were . . . and how profoundly they affected attitudes toward living thylacines.

The book reveals that the thylacine was pictured in ways that appealed to the public’s taste for the exotic and sensational, while hair-raising stories about European predators—wolves and hyenas—were repeated in texts. Significantly, the most negative images made their way into newspapers and magazines in Australia and their publication coincided with the implementation of bounties.

Written with sensitivity and an eye for detail, Paper Tiger uncovers forgotten drawings and lost photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, telling a story full of mystery and revelations. It demonstrates how pictures and words can have a vital influence on a species’ survival.

Paper Tiger tells a heartbreaking story about one of the world’s iconic animals.