Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) was the most important collector of his period and one of the most important collectors in European history. In pursuing his ideal of universal knowledge, he collected everything: naturalia, artworks, fossils, relics, weapons, animals, insects, coins, medals, seals, musical scores, maps, books and manuscripts, gems and minerals, bezoars (the stones formed in sheep stomachs), hundreds of plants, and much, much more—the inventory is stupendous. Yet, as James Delbourgo points out, Sloane's extraordinary legacy has been ridiculed, neglected, even buried, with only a few relics visibly remaining in London locations like Sloane Square and Hans Crescent, in a bust here and there. Even in his own day, his ambitions were often derided as amateurish and self-aggrandizing; in later days, his cataloguing and classifying practices were mocked as benighted and ignorant.

However, in this joyful and comprehensive biography, as encyclopedic as Sloane's own collections, Delbourgo resurrects Sloane's legacy and lays out in detail just how important Sloane himself was in forming the origins of the modern museum. The book fills in the context of Sloane's achievement in full. Delbourgo shows that Sloane's social practice of cultivating acquaintances and friends throughout the world enabled him to accumulate the collections at the heart of his own collection and of most of the world-class museums in London, including the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the British Library, and, of course, the British Museum itself, Sloane's original, vast and eclectic cabinet of curiosities. As Delbourgo explains, Sloane was no aristocrat, as previous collectors had been, but a scientist, whose empirical, synthetic, inclusive approach aimed to establish a cabinet of universal knowledge available to all people.

Nonetheless, and crucially, Delbourgo's approach corrects the common prejudice of biographies that describe the subject's life as the heroic tale of individual genius. Instead, he recounts in remarkable detail the way Sloane developed the essential network of relationships he needed and the way he deftly deployed the institutions of colonialization in order to collect the world. As Delbourgo remarks, “for Sloane collecting a world of things meant collecting a world of people” (xxviii). Nor is Delbourgo deaf to the shameful underside of this global enterprise: he unflinchingly traces the debt Sloane had to slavery for enabling his expensive material and social enterprises. Furthermore, Delbourgo shows that Sloane's social practice of tactfully nurturing these relationships models the procedure of international museums to the current day. At the same time, Delbourgo recounts Sloane's biography as the tale of an Irish Protestant from Ulster, born the year of the Restoration, who had to forge his own way into London society, and who succeeded so well that he became one of the foremost figures of his age.

To tell his story, Delbourgo examines not only Sloane's written works, including letters as well as published papers, but also his objects, many supplied or collected on the advice of acquaintances, experts, and friends, and accounts and reports concerning him and his museum by contemporaries. Despite the volume of its detail, however, Delbourgo easily and amusingly through the labyrinths of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century political, intellectual, and social life, not only in Britain but throughout the world. In doing so, he recontextualizes Sloane and the early museum itself by illuminating the global interdependence and interrelationships without which it could not have developed into the enterprise it did.

The book is organized in two large sections prefaced by an engaging introduction to, as Delbourgo subtitles it, “The Original Sloane Ranger.” The first, “Empire of Curiosities,” consists of three chapters recounting Sloane's early life, travels, and training as a physician who would become highly successful, fashionable, and prominent: it emphasizes Sloane's remarkable journey to Jamaica, whose naturalia were documented in Sloane's magisterial Natural History of Jamaica (1707–1725). Here, Delbourgo stresses the importance of slavery and empire in establishing Sloane's fortune, as well as his expertise in all areas of natural history, including racial difference. In three more chapters, the second section, “Assembling the World,” follows Sloane as he ascends the heights of London Whiggish society, fends off isolationist ambivalence from naysayers, and becomes arguably the most important member of Britain's first scientific institution, The Royal Society for the Advancement of Learning. The thoughtful final chapter examines Sloane's legacy in terms of the modern role of museums: here, Delbourgo ultimately defends Sloane's vision of a world of learning open to all, despite the underpinnings of slavery, and argues for an inclusive role for the modern museum as a means to reconnect mankind with all the wondrous aspects of nature.

Humane, thorough, and elegant as this biography is, the reader could still use some pedestrian apparatuses for reference: in particular a chronology of Sloane's life, including an inventory of his publications (even those in the Philosophical Transactions), a table of his network of friends and acquaintances, and a complete list of the institutions that were seeded in his curiosity cabinet. However, one of the great joys of this splendid book is the illustrations, both contemporary maps and sketches of things and creatures, and sumptuous new photographs of Sloane's collectibles (and one of a painting of the man himself by Stephen Slaughter). In its contextualization of Sloane's enterprise in the broad world of colonialism and empire; in its use of objects and narratives alike to explicate the man and his achievement; in its redefinition of collecting as collective labor; in its emphasis on Sloane's outsider status; in its extraordinary depth and breadth of detail; and in its clarification of the fundamental role of slavery in Sloane's success, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane is a superb contribution to the literature on cultural history, history of science, museum studies, and Restoration and eighteenth-century Britain. It is also an utterly delightful read.