To Have and To Hold

by Philipp Blom

Blom's gripping narration and bizarre cast of eccentrics, visionaries, and fanatics provide a fascinating glimpse into how a pastime becomes an all-consuming passion.

From amassing sacred relics to collecting celebrity memorabilia, the impulse to hoard has gripped humankind throughout the centuries. But what is it that drives people to possess objects that have no conceivable use? To Have and To Hold is a captivating tour of collectors and their treasures from medieval times to the present, from a cabinet containing unicorn horns and a Tsar's collection of teeth to the macabre art of embalmer Dr. Frederick Ruysch, the fabled castle of William Randolph Hearst, and the truly preoccupied men who stockpile food wrappers and plastic cups. An engrossing story of the collector as bridegroom, deliriously, obsessively happy, wed to his possessions, till death do us part.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Art, Microhistory, Museums, Science

284 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Philipp Blom is a German novelist who currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He is best known for his novel, The Simmons Papers (1995). His 2007 novel, Luxor has not yet been translated into English. He is a professional historian who studied at Vienna and Oxford with a focus on eighteenth-century intellectual history. His academic works include: To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting; Encyclopédie, and The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914. He is also the author of The Wines of Austria.

Reviews

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read on how collecting started, at first with the Lordly and wealthy. The first collections were very general - in an age of universal wisdom and corresponding universal illiteracy! These early collections were everything – stones, plants, cadavers, art books… Later collectors became more specialized and in our current age more accessible. In fact everyone becomes a collector and everything collectible by mass production. Children become indoctrinated at an early age to collect.

Some of the early chapters are somewhat esoteric.

The author makes an interesting comparison between serious collections (or collectors) and autism - also between immortality and collections. The collection is the persons’ view of utopia.

Some good quotes:
Page 139 Collectors refute Gertrude Stein’s claim ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’ (Gertrude Stein was herself a collector)
Page 157 The most important object of a collection is the next one
Page 157 Conquest is followed by disillusionment and the necessity for further conquests

[Alison Kagen]

Dreadful, a really disappointing book - offers such promise & delivers almost nothing at all. Poorly written, pretentious (footnotes all over the place but missing from important & obvious areas), clumsy (no captions for poorly reproduced illustrations, lengthy quotes for no benefit). Could have been great: describing collecting from small/minor to major, exploring the "why" not just the "what". Actually there is some "why" but it's inadequate, superficial. I've given 1 star - probably not the worst book ever written or that I'll ever read, but I did read much of it, & it would potentially offer some inspiration over collecting as an interesting human activity.

[Kai Weber · Rating 3 out of 5]

The German and English subtitles (An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting / Szenen aus der Geschichte einer Leidenschaft) both promise the content of this book to be a "history", yet they both limit the scope in certain ways. The English adjective "intimate" hints at the subjectivity of the book, where the author begins with a few words about a collector in his own family and ends with a chance encounter with a drunkard in a café in Vienna. The German noun "Szene" ("scenes") limit the scope of the book: This is not a complete overview, but just a collection of spotlights on a few selected collectors and collections. Taken these two together, we get a subjective selection of collecting, roughly from the late Middle Ages until nowadays, covering naturalists, aristocrats, scientists, museums, art dealers and auctionists, collections of books and everyday items as well as those of curiosities. In one chapter Blom was going a bit too far for my taste, where he also included the collection of memories into the typology of collecting; nevertheless, it's worth to give it a thought, as the psychological drive of people who strive to perpetualize their memories may really be comparable with those who try to overcome the fugacity of our lives by clinging to physical objects.
The book doesn't go too deep into psychological or philosophical considerations and it's writing style is nothing out of the ordinary, but it makes an overall nice reading. And think I felt a bit odd was a contradiction between two aspects of collecting: Blom shows how scientifically productive the collection activities of Buffon and Linné were, and a few dozen pages later he compares all collecting activity with Medusa who kills everything she's looking at. Possibly Blom could have made the distinction clearer between productive and destructive types of collecting, even if he or you believe that both of these aspects are innate to all collecting at the same time.

[Alfredo González · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro muy interesante que recorre superficialmente la historia del coleccionista en sus diversas facetas, al parecer esta afición llego a su cumbre en el renacimiento y especialmente popular en Holanda, donde eran muy populares los gabinetes de las curiosidades. Hoy los coleccionistas mas populares se entretienen con sellos, monedas, pinturas y otros artículos de valor, pero antaño los coleccionistas querían aquello que era raro e inusual, especialmente hay colecciones de restos humanos inusuales, como con mas apéndices de los normales, desfiguraciones físicas y otras anormalidades.
Por supuesto no puede faltar nuestra Santa Madre Iglesia con partes humanas momificadas de sus santos y mártires favoritos, un brazo de Santa Teresa de Avila le hizo compañía a Franco durante sus años de dictadura. Una dictadura sancionada con el brazo milagroso de la Santa, ahora no se quien lo tiene.
Tambien los fragmentos de la Vera Cruz abundan, y como dijo un filosofo: “Grandes bosques han sido talados para satisfacer la demanda”. En Iglesias y catedrales abundan cantidades de sagrados prepucios, cientos de litros de leche de los pechos de la Virgen Maria, debía ser que el niño Jesus ya estaba hasta aquí de leche y la rechazó.

Un libro diferente y muy interesante

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lively and comprehensive look at collecting across time, place, and thing. I was particularly happy about the author's refusal to generalize, illustrating trends in collecting behaviors and attitudes through the accrual of anecdotes rather than resorting to psychological or sociological explanations. This project was aided by the fact that each chapter chose to focus on a particular collector or collection, the contents of which ranged from religious relics to plastic cups. For my own purposes, Blom's discussion of books and bibliomania was quite nice. He describes a few key collections, but goes to greater lengths to suggest books are unique amongst collected objects, for they are objects that speak. This will provide a nice corollary to collectors' accounts of why books are superior objects to collect. Also well-done was Blom's discussion of Benjamin's essay on collection in which he aptly describes Benjamin's "seismographic accuracy" for detailing the behaviors and beliefs of collectors.

[Estefania Pereira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lo lei para mi monografía de grado por recomendación de una profesora pero igualmente no fue lo que esperaba o buscaba como tal. El libro habla de una historia intima, sin embargo, la forma en que esta escrita es algo limitante, ya que seguimos a ciertos coleccionistas de la historia casi como ejemplos de su tiempo, por esta razón pierde algo de verdadera pedagogía. Si trato de recordar lo que aprendi, los nombre sy las historias, la verdad no podría, ya que muchas veces perdí la idea principal de los capitulos y no comprendía que era lo que debía prestar atención. Mis partes favoritas fueron las más personales, cuando habla de su abuelo y en el epílogo, fuera de eso me aburri y estuve un poco decepcionada. También me debo preguntar las razones por las que nunca menciona coleccionistas mujeres como tal, ya que si fueron parte de la creación del coleccionismo moderno y el coleccionismo con objetivo social.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book I keep coming back to - brilliant - I must review properly - Blom is a fascinating writer.

[Jantine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting deep dive into the western European tradition of collecting. It could have been more concise, I think, as the author repeated himself frequently and used lots of quotes that I started to skip over while reading because they were not very relevant. There was also a part where he talked about the gendered nature of collecting that was probably meant well but very gender essentialist - "Men have historically had more free time and money than women and are also more frequently diagnosed with autism, which means a bigger part of the collecting community is male" - okay, with you there, buddy. "The male desire to collect goes as far as creating a military; women do not have the single-mindedness to pursue one rare object or conquest or sit around fishing all day because they are historically expected to do other tasks" - not entirely incorrect, I suppose, but what a baffling conclusion to draw??? I mean, surely there were great female collectors, too - none of whom are highlighted in this book, by the way - the inclusion of whom would have made for a broader and more interesting study of the _human_ impulse to collect.

3.5 stars

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up at Heirloom Books with the hope that I'd learn something relevant to the business, something about rare books and the persons who collect them. I was disappointed. Some of the text herein is about books, but mostly it is about collections and collectors of all sorts going back to the Renaissance and ahead to contemporary collections of ephemera.

[Richard Canale · Rating 3 out of 5]

took me a long time to finish but the book really hits its stride in the last 3rd.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history of collecting, and useful to someone who already has an interest in the area, but only 3 stars as some parts came over as quite pretentious and the figures weren’t captioned.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un muy buen libro que nos expone el coleccionismo no como un hobbie, sino como el arte de ordenar y clasificar el mundo.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

[this originally appeared as an entry titled "A Needle in a Haystack" on my blog, Rampant Biblioholism]

I tend to skip around a lot in my reading. Anything that catches my eye is likely to end up on my list, regardless of topic. So I've been thinking about just what it is that's likely to catch my eye. The book To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting does it just right.

Firstly, it's pretty. Just look at it: it's interesting, it's a bit creepy, and it's completly appropriate for the topic of the book. Once the cover has seduced me into picking up the book, I take a look at the back cover. The description sounds interesting, and as a bonus, it has a nice quote from an author who I've read and enjoyed (in this case, Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World).

So now I open the book and take a look at the table of contents: The Dragon and the Tartar Lamb, The Mastodon and the Taxonomy of Memory, This Curious Old Gentleman, Why Boiling People is Wrong, Three Flying Du...wait, what? Why Boiling People is Wrong? You've got me; I'm in. I've just got to know the answer to that question, so onto my reading list it goes.

How about you? What catches your eye when browsing for books? How do you find something new? What makes you pick up a book from an author you've never heard of or on a subject you normally wouldn't be interested in?

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the best history of collecting that I have yet read, and yes, I have tried to read quite a few. The dry wit and straightforward way of Blom's writing made this a pleasure. Sadly, I left it on the airplane when I was heading home from a visiting artist deal in Ohio, but and considering buying it again just to look through certain passages.

If you are interested in collections or have artwork that deals with them, this is a must read.

[Flora · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject couldn't be more interesting -- and it's one dear to my heart -- but the utilitarian approach to the historical info dampened my enthusiasm a bit early on. Great material, though.

[Grayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read. I liked the fact that Blom wrote some about the psychology of collecting as well as the history of curious collectors. Recommended.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 2.5. Had to read it for. Class. Some interesting parts but mostly a slog. And the book is missing the voices of women and people of color.