ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Hamilton’s important writing on two collections, one formed by Walpole and the other gathered by his contemporary, the actor and collector David Garrick. It engages social network analysis as a methodological framework to explore the deeply sociable and performative nature of object encounters within collections assembled by those in Hamilton’s circle, and examines how her letters and diaries reflect and quantify both the collections themselves and the social networks that were built around and sustained them. Michael Dobson has noted Garrick’s literary and material endeavours to fashion himself as the definitive embodiment of Shakespeare. Here, Hamilton endorses this ambitious alignment, describing how Garrick is combined with the playwright in a decorative motif carved into the malleable yet enduring material of the wooden box.
