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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

A Dog's Head

1950 novel by Jean Dutourd

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ131850749 ↗
Source-derived summary

A Dog's Head (French: Une tête de chien) is a 1950 novel by the French writer Jean Dutourd. It is about a man who is born with the head of a dog, making him a social outcast who ends up succeeding in finances but struggling with trust and identity. According to Dutourd, the book has no particular thesis and he wrote it "merely to tell a story".

The book was published in an English translation by Robin Chancellor in 1951. Its satire made critics compare Dutourd to Voltaire and Jonathan Swift. It received the Prix Courteline.

Editorial summary

“A Dog's Head” enters the record as 1950 novel by Jean Dutourd. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dog's, Head and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1951—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Dog's, Head and novel.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“A Dog's Head” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dog's, Head and novel provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131850749. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1951.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “A Dog's Head”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow A Dog's Head primary sources, A Dog's Head archive and Dog's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “A Dog's Head”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “A Dog's Head” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.