The Madman's Guide to Stamp Collecting

Acclaimed historian and novelist Robert Irwin begins his book about stamp collecting with a caveat: '[it] will be of little or no practical use or interest to stamp collectors. It does not deal with the subject's practicalities'. Instead, Irwin takes us on a fascinating, wayward journey through a wealth of literary texts that cast a surprising light on stamps and the curious activity of collecting them.


Drawing on writers from Sigmund Freud to Ellery Queen, Irwin charts an erudite path that encompasses the psychology and psychopathology of collecting, classification, nostalgia, anal retentiveness, secrecy and subversion, boredom and death. As his sources take him from the colonial history of stamp imagery to the bizarre trade in stamp forgeries, Irwin builds a unique and compelling portrait of the art of collecting, and of himself as collector.