Mr. Collier's Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age

For 300 years, a unique and complex artistic puzzle has been hidden, the solution of which reveals an extraordinary critique of what can be described as the first modern media revolution. The mind behind this puzzle was a Dutch/British still-life painter named Edward Collier. Working around 1700, Collier has been neglected, even forgotten, precisely because his secret messages have never been noticed, let alone understood. Until now. In this book, Dror Wahrman recovers the tale of an extraordinary illusionist artist who engaged in a wholly original way with a major transformation of his generation: an unprecedented explosion in cheap print - newspapers, pamphlets, informational publications, artistic prints - that was produced for immediate release and far-flung circulation faster and in larger quantities that ever before. Edward Collier developed a secret language within his still-life paintings - replete with minutely coded messages, witty games, intricate allusions, and private jokes - in order to draw attention to the potential and the pitfalls of this new information age, uncannily prefiguring the modern perspectives of the media-savvy 21st century. This heretofore obscure artist embedded in his paintings an ingenious commentary on the media revolution of his period, on the birth of modern politics, and on art itself.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: PuzzlesChapter 1: Print 2.0 c. 1700: A New Media Regime Chapter 2: Life Not Still Chapter 3: The Nature of Print Chapter 4: Marking Time Chapter 5: Monarchy in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Chapter 6: Eye Con Chapter 7: A Man with an Impossible Temper Chapter 8: Tom, Dick, and Henry Chapter 9: The Collier Club? Chapter 10: Death of the Author? Chapter 11: Which Revolution? Or the Memory of Mr. Lory Chapter 12: A Signature Gone Wild EpilogueNotes Acknowledgments Index

About the Author :
Dror Wahrman is Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Self and of Imagining the Middle Class.

Review :
"Wahrman guides the reader through the details of the evidence as he finds it on dozens of canvases and, where possible, in Dutch archives with such a sure hand that most readers will not feel that a better story is possible..."--Journal of Modern History "It is difficult to find a book that has been so brilliantly researched; hard to match a scholar who has reconstructed so fine a web of influence. Mr. Collier's Letter Racks makes an exceptional if idiosyncratic contribution to understanding the mentalite of the later Stuart age."--David Howarth, American Historical Review "Wahrman's enthusiasm and his revitalization of a neglected artist is to be commended."--Library Journal "Dror Wahrman has identified a considerable body of work by a hitherto unremarked but consummate illusionist painter. His detective work is playful, and his multi-faceted arguments compelling, especially about forgery, censorship, textual representation, and painterly inscription. Mr. Collier's Letter Racks has the intricate cleverness of a Borgesian fable and the biographical originality of A. J. A. Symons's The Quest for Corvo. It carries the reader on a most unexpected, entertaining journey."--Marina Warner "Dror Wahrman's superb sleuthing has uncovered scores of trompe l'oeil letter racks painted by the Dutch artist Edward Collier in late seventeenth-century England. Packed slyly into these pictures are unsettling questions about the printing revolution and politics of the day and the nature of artistic creation itself. Wahrman holds us in delightful suspense as he unravels this tale with humor and learning and reveals surprising precedents for the web revolution of our own time."--Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds "In Mr. Collier's Letter Racks, Dror Wahrman forensically reconstructs the secret mental world of Edward Collier, an obscure Anglo-Dutch painter specializing in trompe-l'oeil canvasses in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Writing with his customary brio, panache, and chutzpah, and following as much in the footsteps of Umberto Eco as of Sherlock Holmes, Wahrman also shows how Collier's paintings stand as witness to artistic, political, and media revolutions taking place around him at the dawn of the modern era."--Colin Jones, Queen Mary, University of London "An invitation to look closely at an extraordinary set of paintings, this study retrieves Edward Collier from the margins of art history and asks that we take seriously his immensely clever and witty letter-rack pictures. Dror Wahrman brilliantly positions the paintings in relation to Anglo-Dutch relations of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries while keeping a sharp eye on the period's 'media revolution' and its explosion of inexpensive printed materials. As the riddles abound, readers are in good hands with these two expert puzzle-masters: Wahrman and Collier are here perfectly matched in this captivating story."--Craig Ashley Hanson, author of The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism