The concept of eccentricity was central to how people in the nineteenth century understood their world. This monograph is the first scholarly history of eccentricity. Carroll explores how discourses of eccentricity were established to make sense of individuals who did not seem to fit within an increasingly organized social and economic order. She focuses on the self-taught natural philosopher William Martin, the fossilist Thomas Hawkins and the taxidermist Charles Waterton.

From Tottel's Miscellany (1557) to the last twentieth-century Oxford Book of English Verse (1999), anthologies have been a prime institution for the preservation and mediation of poetry. The importance of anthologies for creating and re-creating the canon of English poetry, for introducing ‘new' programmes of poetry, as a record of changing poetic fashions, audience tastes and reading practices, or as a profitable literary commodity has often been asserted. Despite its impact, however, the poetry anthology in itself has attracted surprisingly little critical interest in Britain or elsewhere in the English-speaking world. This volume is the first publication to explore the largely unmapped field of poetry anthologies in Britain. Essays written from a wide range of perspectives in literary and cultural studies, and the point of view of poets, editors, publishers and cultural institutions, aim to do justice to the typological, functional and historical variety with which this form of publication has manifested itself - from early modern print culture to the postmodern age of the world wide web.

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.