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This dissertation proposes a new paradigm in Chinese intellectual life and identity formation between the 1760s and the 1830s by examining the creative efforts made by those whom I call “collector-historians.” I argue that, during this period, the “collector-historian” identity emerged among prominent scholar-officials in Beijing and Jiangnan. In this compound term, collector and historian are not two poles of a spectrum. Instead, they are two different mindsets that were interwoven and that shaped each other; they intersect in their practitioners’ passion for studying and understanding the past. In particular, their collecting and studies of jinshi (lit. bronze and stone) rubbings and rare books as historical media formed the collector-historians’ historical consciousnesses and sensibilities. A set of problems propelled the collector-historians’ study and reconstruction of the past––the tension between transient and evanescent human experience and the desire to elucidate historical and moral truths that were permanent and cosmological in nature. This tension also challenged collector-historians to locate the often-shifting lines between what was knowable and what was not knowable in history. In the efforts to overcome this tension, the collector-historians developed both material and discursive solutions. This dissertation consists of four chapters, and each chapter addresses one aspect of the self-understanding and subjectivities of the collector-historian. Chapter 1 focuses on the collecting of jinshi rubbings and the compilation of their catalogues. It argues that jinshi catalogues compiled by Weng Fanggang (1733–1818), Wang Chang (1724–1806), and Huang Yi (1744–1802) were essentially the material representations of the ontological processes of collecting in which both manual labor and calligraphic skills were important parts. Chapter 2 employs the concept of “collector-historian” to reexamine jinshi and evidential scholarship in the eighteenth century. It shows how the collector-historians, particularly Weng Fanggang, developed discursive and methodological tools to embrace the imperfectability of collecting and collections. Chapter 3 focuses on rare book accumulating in the Jiangnan area and discusses the meticulous collecting, repairing, and reprinting of the Song-Yuan editions that served as ordering technologies for collector-historians, including Huang Pilie (1763–1825), to connect with and reconstruct the past. Chapter 4 examines the trend of historicizing the Confucian classics that emerged in practices of book collecting and collating among the collector-historians as represented by Gu Guangqi (1766–1835). Thus, through collecting, studying, inventorying, and trans-medial re-presentations of the historical objects and texts, the collector-historians tried to establish certainty about the past and locate the shifting line between the knowable and unknowable. At the same time, they situated themselves in a liminal position in the long tradition of learning by re-presenting and trans-mediating the past to future generations.