How a Europe torn apart by the Napoleonic Wars became the site of a book-collecting frenzy, laying the foundation for the Anglophone world's greatest collections of rare books. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, bibliomania ('book madness') swept the English upper classes. Vast sums of money were spent on books from the dawn of printing; fortunes were lost, families shattered, estates sold. By the end of the century most of the collections assembled had been sold or donated and had come to rest in national and research libraries across the UK and America, forming the groundwork on which almost all collections of early printed books in the Anglophone world have since been built. But where did these books come from? Who bought them and how? Portrait of an Obsession recovers this forgotten story by focusing on the obsessive and majestic collecting of George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834), the greatest of the Regency bibliomanes. Historian,...