Today’s libraries and museums are heavily indebted to the passions and obsessions of numerous individual collectors who devoted their lives to amassing collections of books, manuscripts, artworks, and other culturally significant objects. Collecting the Past brings together the latest research on a wide range of significant British collectors from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, including Hans Sloane, Sarah Sophia Banks, Thomas Phillipps, Sydney Cockerell, J. P. Morgan Jr., Alfred Chester Beatty and R. E. Hart. Contributors to the volume examine the phenomenon of collecting in a variety of settings and across a range of different materials. Considering the aims and motives that led these collectors to assemble such remarkable collections, the book also examines the history of these collections after the collector’s death. Particular attention is given to the often complicated relationship between collectors and the public institutions that subsequently came to house their collections. Situated within the framework of cultural collecting more generally, this book offers an authoritative series of essays on key collectors. Collecting the Past should be most interesting to researchers, academics and postgraduate students engaged in the study of museum studies, book history, manuscript studies, museum history, library history and the history of collecting. Professionals in libraries, museums and galleries will also find the volume of great interest.

Offers a broad and vivid overview of the culture of collecting in France over the long nineteenth-century.

Many history museums collect contemporary objects, stories, images and sounds. But reasoned collecting strategies and policies are often lacking. The sheer quantity of available material culture and the complexity of contemporary life leave many confused about how best to document and engage with the present. Collecting the Contemporaryaddresses one of the most fundamental issues facing today's history museums: why and how to engage with contemporary collecting? In a format which is approachable, attractive - and above all actionable, this handbook is packed with stimulating thinking and international case studies from some of the leading practitioners and thinkers in the field. This overview of contemporary collecting in a social historical context is well overdue. Original source material, ideas, developments and research have never before been brought together in a single volume.

In order to understand our past, we need to understand ourselves as archaeologists and our discipline. This volume presents recent research into collecting practices of European Antiquities by national museums, institutes and individuals during the 19th and early 20th-century, and the 'Ancient Europe' collections that resulted and remain in many museums.This was the period during which the archaeological discipline developed as a scientific field, and the study of the archaeological paradigmatic and practical discourse of the past two centuries is therefore of importance, as are the sequence of key discoveries that shaped our field.Many national museums arose in the early 19th century and strived to acquire archaeological objects from a wide range of countries, dating from Prehistory to the Medieval period. This was done by buying, sometimes complete collections, exchanging or copying. The networks along which these objects traveled were made up out of the ranks of diplomats, aristocracy, politicians, clergymen, military officials and scholars. There were also intensive contacts between museums and universities and there were very active private dealers.The reasons for collecting antiquities were manifold. Many, however, started out from the idea of composing impressive collections brought together for patriotic or nationalistic purposes and for general comparative use. Later on, motives changed, and in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities became more scientifically oriented. Eventually these collections fossilized, ending up in the depots. The times had changed and the acquisition of archaeological objects from other European countries largely came to an end.This group of papers researches these collections of 'Ancient Europe' from a variety of angles. As such it forms an ideal base for further researching archaeological museum collection history and the development of the archaeological discipline.

Explores how the idea of rare books was shaped by collectors, traders and libraries from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Using examples from across Europe, David McKitterick looks at how rare books developed from being desirable objects of largely private interest to become public and even national concerns.

Leon Rosenstein offers a sweeping and lively account of the origin and development of the antique as both a cultural concept and an aesthetic category.

This volume addresses the representation of history and collective memory in Latin American literature. The book presents a variety of novel perspectives on the subject, linked by the common themes of the subjectivity of time and history, literature used as a political tool and the representation of marginalized groups. The collection takes an original approach to viewing national histories as represented in literature by adopting a cross-disciplinary position. While there are other publications addressing some of the issues raised in this collection, this book goes beyond literary representations of history. The essays collected here examine technological, political and social developments as a means of creating, re-structuring and (in some cases) potentially destroying nations.