Description

A fascinating, one-of-a-kind journey through the world of stamps and collecting by maverick historian and writer Robert Irwin

Why do we collect? Is it to rescue objects from oblivion? Is it a kind of desire – or even a kind of madness? In this mosaic of fiction, philosophy, sociology, biography and autobiography, virtuoso thinker Robert Irwin takes us on a wayward journey through the art of collecting, and his own intellectual passions.

Drawing on the works of writers including Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Iris Murdoch and Georges Perec, as well as a host of lesser-known geniuses, flaneurs, obsessives and eccentrics, Irwin explores everything from mysticism to nostalgia, classical antiquity to surrealism, dreams to death. We join Thomas De Quincey on a night mail coach, encounter the man who set out to acquire every stamp ever issued and enter the badlands of fakes and forgeries, all in the company of a uniquely brilliant mind.

This is a book of wonders; of labyrinthine digressions, good humour and a delight in small things. It is a meditation on the stuff of life.

Publisher Review

[A] delightful mishmash of quotations, digressions, obscure facts, arcane anecdotes and playful romps… The Madman’s Guide to Stamp Collecting is a Cinderella book, though I am certain that the wonders it has to offer will not vanish on the stroke of midnight — Alberto Manguel * Literary Review * Not a manual for the aspiring philatelist but rather a philosophical disquisition on subjects of interest to Irwin, and indeed to anyone who’s ever experienced, say, boyhood, obsessions, boredom or desire… I shed a tear at the end of this, Irwin’s final work, recognising not just a fellow collector – of ideas, ephemera, stuff – but a fellow man emptying his pockets, as it were, at the end of a long life — Ian Sansom * Spectator * Encyclopedic, curious, labyrinthine and surprising, like the work of Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Browne, Robert Burton * TLS * Erudite… Engrossing intellectual history * Kirkus Reviews *