The Idea of D.D. Shamray’s Doctoral Dissertation “Free Printing Houses of the Eighteenth Century (1783—1796)”

Abstract

The article considers the unpublished heritage of D.D Shamray (1886—1971), book historian, bibliologist, library scientist and bibliographer, employee of the Imperial Public Library (State Public Library named after M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, now — The National Library of Russia, NLR), connected with his idea of doctoral thesis on the period of free printing in Russia (1783—1796) in the beginning of 1950s. Archival materials on this topic are stored in the Department of manuscripts of the Russian State Library (RSL) and the Department of archival documents of the NLR. The plan of dissertation “Free Printing Houses of the Eighteenth Century (1783—1796)” and the unpublished work “The New Printing House of the Academy of Sciences, 1758—1783” reveal the idea of D.D. Shamray. These materials show that the scientist intended to pay special attention to the study of social, cultural, political prerequisites for the emergence of “free printing”, including the repertoire of manuscript books of the 18th century, and to highlight the practice of private orders in state printing plants as a prehistory of free printing. D.D. Shamray planned to create “Book chronicle of free printing houses”, understanding it as the compilation of complete bibliography of published products prepared in private printing houses during the period of “free printing”. D.D. Shamray widely used archival sources, mainly the documents of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences (now — St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences), citing some of them in their entirety. However, the scientist did not reach the level of wide generalization and as a result, most of his texts on this topic remained unpublished. The study of materials on the unrealized plan of D.D. Shamray testifies to the important historiographical significance of the unpublished works for the complete understanding of the history of the scientific process in the field of domestic book studies and the history of book.