Collecting English Magic: Materiality, Modernity, Museums

This study focuses on the collection and interpretation of English material magic by English museums in the modern era. Based on a survey of English amulets in English museums, the thesis addresses the question ‘how have museum collections of English popular magic materialised relations between people and things in practice?’ Melding two academic perspectives — historical interpretations of English magic and analyses of ethnographic collections — it contributes to both fields of study. Theoretical approaches from material culture studies, museology, anthropology and history are used. Building on four areas of current academic concern — magic, modernity, materiality and museums — the thesis explores four themes: changing attitudes to magic, shifting attitudes to the material world, the growth and definition of academic disciplines, and relationships between amateurism and professionalism. The thesis' temporal scope extends from 1850 to the present, with a focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when most of the collections were amassed, and on their re-interpretation in the second half of the twentieth century. Taking English amulets as its starting point, the thesis examines why and how these have been juxtaposed with artefacts from the rest of Britain, Europe and the world. It investigates networks of institutions, people, objects and ideas which formed and were formed by the collections. The study pivots around a number of key case studies, both of people who collected and interpreted amulets and of institutions that assembled them. Institutions encompass the Pitt Rivers Museum, Folklore Society, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Brighton Museum, and Museum of Witchcraft and Magic; individuals include General Pitt-Rivers, Edward Burnett Tylor, Frederick Elworthy, Edward Lovett, Henry Balfour, Alfred Cort Haddon, Herbert Toms, Beatrice Blackwood and Cecil Williamson. The thesis concludes that collections of English mate