Steven Shapin
"Everybody has things; some people collect things; and just a few of these people are obsessives, defining themselves through their collections. What’s been thought about people like that? Are they contemptible, pitiable, or admirable? Are they perverse or pious, crazy or charismatic? Delbourgo puts the collector right at the center of a historical story about what it means to be human. A Noble Madness enlightens, it provokes, and it delights."
Justin Smith-Ruiu
"What a dazzling cabinet of curiosities! James Delbourgo shows in this mesmerizing book the parallel between people’s psyches and their objects. From the high-end art collector to Jeffrey Dahmer’s horrifying temple of human bones, nothing puts the human soul on display like collecting. A Noble Madness makes a fundamental contribution to the study of human psychology."
Jackson Lears
"An extraordinarily illuminating account of a powerful cultural impulse, James Delbourgo’s A Noble Madness ranges from ancient Rome and Ming China to Hearst’s Hollywood and Warhol’s New York; his cast of characters includes historical and fictional figures as various as Cicero and Darwin, Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. We could not ask for a better guide to this fascinating territory than Delbourgo. A Noble Madness is a delight to read and ponder, not to mention an exceptional achievement in cultural history."
Cathy Gere
"In this fascinating, witty, and provocative book, Delbourgo’s collectors range from emperors to scientists, from shopaholics to taxonomists, from bibliomaniacs to serial killers. Give it to the collector in your life, and watch the sparks fly!"
Daniel Weiss
"A tour de force of scholarship and storytelling."
Jenny Uglow
"A gallery of collectors from ancient times to the present — obsessives and dilettanti, hoarders and cataloguers, emperors, scholars and libertines. Delbourgo’s exploration of their ‘madness,’ whether uncontrolled passion, devious greed, or a desire to order chaos, is an exuberant and illuminating delight."
Stephen Fry
"I never really understood just how intensely, wildly, hilariously, and sometimes tragically obsessive true collectors can be until I read, in breathless wonder, James Delbourgo’s magnificent A Noble Madness. This book is itself so compulsive and entertaining that I found myself wanting to collect the collectors whose lives and passions Delbourgo so brilliantly brings to life."
Hartwig Fischer
"This is a wonderful book: witty, erudite, and deliciously written. The book has many layers, with different energies flowing and glowing across the pages, maintaining elegance and lightness of touch throughout. A rare combination of human empathy and critical insight. Delbourgo takes us round the world and deep into history to reveal both the dark and the bright side of collecting."
Erin Thompson
"Is a scientist plunging into a jungle in search of specimens really all that different from someone surreptitiously snipping passersby’s hair to add to his very private collection? Delbourgo has great fun tackling this question by presenting a collection of collectors in a witty dash through the history of a deeply human urge."
Daniel H. Weiss
"A tour de force of scholarship and storytelling, James Delbourgo explores the obsessive side of a very human impulse, and in so doing brings new insight into something deep and enduringly important within ourselves."
Kirkus Reviews
2025-05-02
Loving things.
Historian Delbourgo examines the changing role of the collector in our cultural imagination, from ancient looter to modern-day hoarder. Motivated by a desire for wealth, knowledge, prestige, and, not least, order, collectors have amassed objects such as artworks, scientific specimens, religious relics, books, and gems. Delbourgo traverses time and place to portray collectors’ roles: In premodern China, a collector was seen as a person of superior sophistication; in Korea, collecting was a path to attaining status. Some artifacts—religious relics, for example, or African art—have been sought for their spiritual or magical power. Romantics saw collecting as an expression of one’s inner self, an idea that persists, even as collecting has been associated with colonialism, looting, and profit. Collecting, Delbourgo asserts, also has been associated with mental illness. Fictional collectors, such as Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, behave maniacally; Freud diagnosed the urge to collect as an expression of suppressed neuroses. Art collectors have been depicted variously as gloomy, gothic recluses, as figures associated with danger and unabated passion, and as libertines, while naturalists—Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Alexander von Humboldt, to name a few—are more likely celebrated for their dogged pursuit of scientific specimens. Delbourgo casts a wide net to offer biographies of collectors such as Rudolf II, a Holy Roman emperor who aspired to assemble the world in miniature; Marie Antoinette, known as the “trinket queen”; Alfred Kinsey, who collected data about sex; and female collectors, notably, Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Peggy Guggenheim, motivated by a pursuit of beauty and “nourishment of the soul.” In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association included hoarding disorder in its updated manual. As Delbourgo amply reveals, however, the distinction between the ardent collector and the pathological hoarder is hardly clear.
A well-researched history of the passion to possess.
