This book will emphasise three themes about goldfish through history: their ubiquity and ambiguity, their status as a moving target, and their role in unforeseen developments. Although their ubiquity and seeming ordinariness has meant goldfish have not been subject to historical study, interest in the cultural history of fish is historiographically timely. Jackson has recently published the first study of fish in two-­‐dimensional art to illustrate their religious, social, political, and economic significance (2011), and there is an ongoing NWO study of early modern ichthyology (Smith, A New History of Fishes, 2015). There have also been specialist studies on fish in early modern scientific illustration (Kusukawa 2000) as well as studies of whales, fish-­‐like mammals (Hoare 2009). However, just as the highest forms of scientific creativity often come from explaining ordinary natural phenomena, the history of an ordinary goldfish is extraordinary and understudied.