{"id":135740,"date":"2025-10-21T09:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135740\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T09:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T09:30:11","slug":"cat-on-novelists-dorchester-statue-not-susie-after-complaints-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135740\/","title":{"rendered":"Cat on novelist’s Dorchester statue ‘not Susie’ after complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Critics said the cat in the picture shared by the charity did not resemble Susie<\/p>\n

Campaigners working to install a statue of a Dorset novelist with a cat at her feet say they have been upset by “unpleasant” comments about the animal’s appearance.<\/p>\n

Visible Women crowdfunded for a life-size bronze of Sylvia Townsend Warner<\/a> to sit in Dorchester’s South Street, with the cat based on a locally famous feline, Susie.<\/p>\n

But messages about the animal’s lack of resemblance to Susie have prompted the charity to “move away” from the connection, saying it is now a “generic cat”.<\/p>\n

Anyone who donated to the crowdfunding campaign on the basis of the Susie likeness is being offered a refund.<\/p>\n

\"Susie<\/p>\n

A Facebook page dedicated to Susie has more than 10,000 followers<\/p>\n

The \u00a360,000 project aims to erect Dorchester’s first non-royal statue of a woman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cat detail was intended to be a nod to Townsend Warner’s pets.<\/p>\n

On a Facebook page dedicated to Susie that has more than 10,000 followers, criticism included the “sludge green” of the casting wax and the absence of a tracking collar on the animal, even though the technology had not been invented during Townsend Warner’s lifetime.<\/p>\n

The charity said sculptor Denise Dutton, who also created the Mary Anning statue in Lyme Regis<\/a>, had found the whole saga “hilarious”.<\/p>\n

\"HowardHoward Coster<\/p>\n

Sylvia Townsend Warner lived in Dorset with her partner, poet Valentine Ackland<\/p>\n

In a statement posted on Facebook, Visible Women said: “While we initially hoped Susie could inspire the cat in the Sylvia Townsend Warner statue, the sculpture was always created from photographs, making a precise likeness impossible. <\/p>\n

“Recent comments have caused upset and, as a charity, we feel it’s best to separate all ties. The cat is now simply a generic cat.”<\/p>\n

Sylvia Townsend Warner was a contemporary of Virginia Woolf and lived in Dorset with her long-term partner, Valentine Ackland, in the early 20th Century.<\/p>\n

In the planning application for the statue, Dorchester Civic Society said: “Despite her remarkable contributions, her name is rarely mentioned and remains absent from Dorset’s literary landscape.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Critics said the cat in the picture shared by the charity did not resemble Susie Campaigners working to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-135740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}