Influence
The story was mentioned in Henrietta Christian Wright's 1895 book Children's Stories in American Literature.
On the death of Algernon Charles Swinburne in 1909, W. B. Yeats (then 38 years of age) was reported to have declared to his sister "I am king of the cats."
Polish-French modern artist Balthus inscribed his 1935 self-portrait "A Portrait of H.M. The King of the Cats Painted by Himself."
Stephen Vincent Benét's 1937 short story "The King of Cats" based around this folk story was selected by The Library of America for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.
Frances Jenkins Olcott's 1942 anthology Good Stories For Great Holidays included a version of Charlotte S. Burne's "The King of the Cats" adapted by Ernest Rhys.
Barbara Sleigh's 1961 children's book Carbonel: The King of the Cats is inspired in part by this tale, as are its two sequels, The Kingdom of Carbonel and Carbonel and Callidor, which make up the Carbonel series.
Peter Straub's 1980 novel, Shadowland also references the tale several times.
In John Crowley's 1987 novel The Solitudes, "The King of the Cats" is explicitly related to "the Death of Pan" as recorded by Plutarch and interpreted by St. Augustine of Hippo as a shift in World Ages.
"The King of the Cats" is referenced, with slight changes, in Diane Duane's 1993 Young Wizards novel, A Wizard Abroad.
Henry Louis Gates wrote a profile of Albert Murray in The New Yorker April 8, 1996 entitled "King of Cats".
China Miéville takes the idea of a king of the cats from this story and Robert Irwin's "Father of Cats" from The Arabian Nightmare for his 1998 novel King Rat.
A 2006 biography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. by Wil Haygood was entitled King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr..
American author P. T. Cooper's 2012 middle-grade children's novel, The King of the Cats, starts off with a retelling of the original legend but then picks up where the legend left off. The novel tells of the death of Tom Tildrum and the crowning of his successor, Jack Tigerstripes, who is told by a feline oracle on his coronation day that he is destined to be captured by a human and to end his life in exile. The resulting 217-page adventure is reminiscent of a Disney-style talking-animal story such as The Lion King.
DC Comics' Batman has a character named the King of the Cats, who is Catwoman's brother before he was eliminated in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The title track of american rock band Ted Leo and the Pharmacists's 2003 EP "Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead" was seemingly inspired by the County Cork version of the story mentioned above, with references in the song to the graveyard at Inchigeelagh as well as the title.
The 2007 film Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale features "The King of the Cats", voiced by Garry Chalk, a parody of the Rat King in the original The Nutcracker, and includes a song named after him.
The University of Washington has a poetry group called King Of The Cats, popularly abbreviated as Cats.
Kim Newman's novella Vampire Romance (2012) has a group of vampire elders gathering after the downfall of Count Dracula to decide which one of them will become the next "King of the Cats"; the story explicitly refers to the Tom Tildrum folk tale.
The King of the Cats appeared in the Halloween content for the 2012 MMO The Secret World by the name of Irusan. The quest line is called "The Cat God" and it consists of three missions that result in a showdown with Irusan at Stonehenge where it is revealed that he is in fact Baron Samedi in disguise.
Read more about this topic: The King O' The Cats
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Cultural expectations shade and color the images that parents- to-be form. The baby product ads, showing a woman serenely holding her child, looking blissfully and mysteriously contented, or the television parents, wisely and humorously solving problems, influence parents-to-be.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country’s God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)