On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums

Examines impulse for collecting, especially in London, England. Contents: The museum crowd : fragments shored against their ruin Fugitive articulation of an all-obliterated tongue : Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the politics of collecting Acquired taste : the museum enterprise comes home A gallery of readings : rendezvous in the museum "The works on the wall must take their chance" : a poetics of acquisition An empire's great expectations : the museum in decline Coda : in Freud's study