"History, As a Spectacle": The Antiquary as Modern Writer in Hope Mirrlees, Virginia Woolf and Manuel Mujica Láinez

Hope Mirrlees, Virginia Woolf, and Manuel Mujica Láinez shared similar dispositions toward the past as an archeological niche of knowledge. This article aims to examine how these writers from different literary traditions assemble in time and space by reason of the antiquary figure. To this end, the ubiquity of history and antiquarianism were approached through Mirrlees's essay "Listening in to the Past" (1926) and A Fly in Amber (1962). The antiquary advocates for the relevance of art, the past, and present in modernity, and in assisting fact and fiction. Mirrlees's antiquary results in a narrator of histories marked by the old and new in the streets of Paris, London, or at the Prado Museum.