Studies in Uniquity: Horace Walpole’s Singular Collection

Abstract

This essay examines the entirety of Horace Walpole’s literary, historical, and architectural work in order to articulate his remarkable philosophy of collection. Eschewing the logic of the antique that exalts some essential property inherent within the singular, Walpole’s studies in “uniquity” instead value and collect the accidental and the in essential. Walpole views collection and community as an open and fugitive processes, writing histories that foreground the contingency 1 of time rather than offer any definitive account of its passing, and his always-expanding collection of curiosities exhibits the harmonious confusion of the Wunderkammer rather than the taxonomic pretensions of the modern museum.