The Emergence of the Modern Museum , a unique compendium of original sources, presents a detailed and dynamic account of the development of the museum and its practices in Britain during a crucial period of formation. From poignant recollections of visits to stately homes to charged debates about the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles or the establishment of an Indian Museum; from early catalogue entries describing the curiosities discovered by Captain Cook to later ones organizing human skulls according to Darwinian principles-this volume offers a representative sample of the diverse, contentious, and often moving ideas that have shaped the modern institution. With original selections, thematic organization, and insightful critical apparatus, this collection makes newly available a wide range of material, including proposals for reform laid out in parliamentary papers, essays by influential theorists and curators, and firsthand accounts of museum-going in the popular press.

Jonah Siegel Siegel is Professor of English at Rutgers University and President of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. He is the author of Haunted Museum: Longing, Travel, and the Art-Romance Tradition and Desire & Excess: The Nineteenth-Century Culture of Art .