JavaScript getting custom object from viewstate

I am pretty sure this question would have been asked before but I cannot find it so please post the link to where I can go to it if so..

However, I persist some data on a Postback in asp.net using a ViewState. The ViewState contains a collection of my own custom object. e.g.

 ViewState["List"] as List<Animal>

Is it possible I can get this list and pass it to the client-side? so really, can it be serialised?

I have tried:

// HTML
<asp:TextBox ID="theList" runat="server" style="display:none"></asp:TextBox> 

 //Sever Side
theList.Text = ViewState["List"].Tostring();

//JS
document.getElementById('theList').innerText;

but of course, this isn't my data this contains the namespace.

My first thoughts was to use JSON.Parse on the client, however I need to pass the data first which is the main issue.

Thanks