Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2012

Abstract

This essay examines attitudes towards the practice of collecting represented in the Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors between 1901 and 1914 under its first editor, J. T. Herbert Baily. I argue that contributors to the magazine worked to reformulate collecting in response to the Victorian critique of the practice, which emphasized the collector's narcissistic tendency to disregard the historical alterity of objects. This revised mode of collecting, which attends carefully to contexts of origin, often led its practitioners to consider the national significance of artifacts. The magazine reflects the complicated political results of this revision of collecting practices as it intertwines aggressive nationalism with cosmopolitanism and merges cultural imperialism with a critique of globalization.

Publication Title

Victorian Periodicals Review

Volume

45

Issue

2

First Page

175

Last Page

199

Comments

© 2012, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Collectors and collecting--Great Britain--Attitudes; Collectors and collecting--Great Britain--Philosophy

Subjects - Names (LCNAF)

Baily, James Thomas Herbert, 1865-1914. Connoisseur

Geographic Coverage

Great Britain

Genre/Form

articles

Type

Text

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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