“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!”—Cathy Gere, author of The Tomb of Agamemnon
A captivating history of obsessive collectors: from ancient looters and idolaters to fin de siècle decadents, Freudian psychos, and hoarders.
Collectors are often praised for their taste in art or contributions to science, and considered great public benefactors. But collectors have also been seen as dangerous obsessives who love objects too much. Why? From looters and idolaters to fin de siècle decadents and Freudian psychos, A Noble Madness is a captivating history of obsessive collectors from ancient times to today.
From Roman emperors lusting after statues to modern-day hoarders, award-winning author James Delbourgo tells the extraordinary story of fanatical collectors throughout history. He explains how the idea first emerged that when we look at someone’s collection, we see a portrait of their soul: complex, intriguing, yet possibly insane. What Delbourgo calls “the Romantic collecting self” has always lurked on the dark side of humanity.
But this dark side has a silver lining. Because obsessive collectors are driven by passion, not profit, they have been countercultural heroes in the modern imagination, defying respectability and taste in the name of truth to self.
A grand portrait gallery of collectors in all their decadent glory, A Noble Madness recounts the saga of the human urge to accumulate, from Caligula to Marie Antoinette, Balzac to Freud, Norman Bates to Andy Warhol. Collectors’ love of objects may be mad, even dangerous. But we want to believe their love’s a noble madness because by expressing that love, they are themselves.
About the Author
James Delbourgo is the James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. He previously taught at McGill and Harvard, and is author of the prize-winning Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum. He lives in New York.
Praise For…
[A] brilliant, droll study in the shifting profile and consistent obsession of the stop-at-nothing, buy-or-die collector. — Dominic Green - Wall Street Journal
Every chapter of A Noble Madness is its own cabinet of curiosities. — Sukhdev Sandhu - The Guardian
An amusing and enjoyable book. Covering art, relics, natural science, books and even Don Giovanni and his quantitative approach to seduction, it is nothing if not stimulating. — James Stourton - Literary Review
As richly detailed as it is researched. . . . Delbourgo has a deft touch. — Chloë Ashby - London Times
This witty, anecdote-filled history ranges across the ages. — Martin Chilton - The Independent
Delbourgo traverses time and place to portray collectors' roles… A well-researched history of the passion to possess. — Kirkus Reviews
Rollicking… Readers will enjoy this whip-smart history. — Publishers Weekly
Entertaining… A wide-ranging, compulsively readable exploration of an intriguing facet of human behavior. — Sara Shreve - Library Journal
Delbourgo's book deals with a different 'dark side of collecting'… [A Noble Madness] ultimately concludes that throughout history and the world over, 'by expressing that love' for things, collectors 'are themselves.' — Maggie Taft - Booklist
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. — Stephen Fry, author of Odyssey: The Greek Myths Reimagined
A magisterial rethinking of why we collect. I loved this book. — Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
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. — Justin Smith-Ruiu, author of Irrationality
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. — Jackson Lears, author of Animal Spirits
A tour de force of scholarship and storytelling. — Daniel Weiss, Metropolitan Museum of Art President Emeritus
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! — Cathy Gere, author of The Tomb of Agamemnon
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. — Steven Shapin, author of Eating and Being and A Social History of Truth
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. — Erin Thompson, author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present
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. — Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men
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. — Hartwig Fischer, former director of the British Museum
