The early modern debate regarding animal mental characteristics was not confined to philosophers and scientists. Not surprising, it spilled over into fictional literature, which was not only more accessible and widely read but also more inclined to express concern with animal suffering. One example of this literary phenomenon at the turn of the eighteenth century is the subject of the present chapter. Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, usually known simply as The Turkish Spy, was a popular work of fiction in the eighteenth century, particularly in England. The first volume, published in French in 1684, was almost certainly written by an Italian, Giovanni P. Marana. As for the authorship of the following seven volumes, published in English between 1691 and 1694, various possibilities have been raised, such as Marana himself, an unknown English author (or authors), or perhaps Protestant exiles in England. The work was written as a collection of letters by Mahmut, a spy for the Turkish Empire, who resided many years in Paris and corresponded with various officials, family, and friends, reporting on the occurrences, fashions, and customs of seventeenth-century Europe, mainly France. Mahmut was of course a fictional protagonist, who voiced observations on late seventeenthcentury Europe as if through the eyes of a non-European. Therefore, his was ultimately an occidental point of view. While The Turkish Spy was written toward the end of the seventeenth century, its popularity and influence were apparent particularly in the following century. It inaugurated the genre of foreign observer epistolary literature which was to become well known in such works as Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Goldsmiths's Citizen of the World. Yet in itself it has received relatively little attention in modern scholarship. In particular, the references to animals in The Turkish Spy have received only cursory discussions. The Turkish Spy, however, was one of those fictional works which made complicated philosophical ideas accessible to a wide reading public, and therefore the theriophilic overtones it contained no doubt both stemmed from and fostered sensitivity to animal sentience.

The many passages on animals in The Turkish Spy were written in a consistently theriophilic vein.