Elephants are in dire straits – again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliché: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time. As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion – or fail to do so – and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.|Elephants were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century, with late-colonial conservation efforts, their numbers grew – but today, according to one estimate, an elephant is killed every 15 minutes. The reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now almost a cliché: their high intelligence, their rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, their caring matriarchal societal structures and their strangely charismatic grace. Death and Compassion is the first study to probe literary genres, over three centuries, that pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi River – genres such as early European travelogues, hunting accounts, game-ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, novels and poetry. It examines what these literatures imply about human attitudes towards elephants and who shows compassion towards them. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect. Scholarly and rigorous but also immensely readable, Death and Compassion will attract a wide readership in academia and among the general public, especially among those with a special interest in ecological issues, in animal rights and in literature.|Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)