Collecting the past : British collectors and their collections from the 18th to the 20th centuries / edited by Toby Burrows and Cynthia Johnston.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Burrows, Toby, editor.

Johnston, Cynthia (Project director), editor.

Series:

Routledge Focus

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Collectors and collecting--Great Britain--History.

Collectors and collecting.

History.

Great Britain.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 143 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019.

Summary:

"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 Jnr., 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Collecting the past : manuscript and book collecting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries / Toby Burrows and Cynthia Johnston

Creating and keeping a national treasure : the changing uses of Hans Sloane's collection in the eighteenth century / Alice Marples

Sarah Sophia Banks : a "truly interesting collection of visiting cards and co." / Arlene Leis

"There never was such a collector since the world began": a new look at Sir Thomas Phillipps / Toby Burrows

American collectors and the trade in medieval illuminated manuscripts in London, 1919-1939 : J. P. Morgan Junior, A. Chester Beatty and Bernard Quaritch Ltd. / Laura Cleaver and Danielle Magnusson

Sydney Cockerell : a bibliophile director-collector / Stella Panayotova

Spending a fortune : Robert Edward Hart, bibliophile and numismatist, an industrialist collector in Blackburn, Lancashire / Cynthia Johnston

Ossified collections : the past encapsulated in British institutions today / Karen Attar.

Notes:

"Routledge Focus"

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Collecting the past

ISBN:

9780815382348

0815382340

OCLC:

1051776354