How does the act of collecting shape our ideas of value, our sense of identity and our perception of the world? This volume shows that collecting is a fundamental knowledge-producing activity that not only transforms the objects it aims to preserve but also affects the self-conceptions and worldviews of the collectors themselves.

Combining literary history, art history and the history of science, the volume focuses on small textual and material forms – such as letters, folk tales or natural history specimens – both as objects of collecting practices and as organizing principles of larger ensembles. Three sections examine how collecting participates in the production of epistemic, cultural and economic value, enables the construction of the self and the other and shapes ways of seeing by means of strategic arrangement. The case studies, which span the 18th century to the present day, range from colonial bone collections to modernist anthologies to the paper technologies of capitalism.

This volume provides a framework for researchers who want to understand how the management and arrangement of small forms establishes authority and enables new ways of understanding and seeing the world. (1238 characters)