Offering a spectrum of approaches to the phenomenon of collecting from the 16th century to the present, this book covers the collecting of any sort of material objects, from bus-tickets to rare books, Polynesian carvings to children's toys, and botanical specimens to Impressionist paintings. By isolating a limited number of strategic examples, the authors are able to use them as a basis for new insights into the psychological, aesthetic, social and political dimensions of the collecting impulse. For they go further than just dealing with physical objects that have been gathered together by magpie private collectors: they go on to examine the organization of ideas and intellectual models of collecting.