Book Description

New and innovative writing inspired by the medical, scientific and sometimes downright extraordinary contents of Henry Wellcome's remarkable museum. Within this unusual and arresting book is a powerhouse of imagination created by a dazzling array of the finest writers. The Phantom Museum offers personal responses by A. S. Byatt, Tobias Hill, Peter Blegvad, Hari Kunzru, Helen Cleary and Gaby Wood to the extraordinary and little-known collection of the businessman and philanthropist Sir Henry Wellcome. Wellcome was fascinated by anthropology and the history of medicine. By the time he died in 1936, he had built up one of the world's largest and most unusual museum collections. The objects Wellcome brought together range from the ancient to the magical, from the religious to the scientific. Beautiful, mysterious or bizarre, they all illuminate the history of human beings and their bodies. Playful, disturbing and thought-provoking by turns, The Phantom Museum combines text and images, fact and fiction, comment and imagination to consider how objects can be read depending on who views them and when. Published to coincide with a major new exhibition of Wellcome's collection, this is a lasting introduction to its wonders, and a remarkable collection of new and original writing.