Rare Book Department Research Articles

“Nihilists” against “Romantics”: P.L. Boborykin’s “Sorrowful Brethren” Play Publication as Historical and Literary Discovery

The article represents a review of the fi rst book in the new series “Reverse Perspective” issued by “Delo” publishing house and based on the materials from the rare books department of RANEPA Scientifi c Library. This is the fi rst publication of Pyotr Dmitrievich Boborykin’s (1836–1921) play “The Sorrowful Brethren” (late 1860s), depicting the life of St. Petersburg literary world in the early 1860s. The ideological basis of the play is the confl ict between liberal “last romantics” of the 1840s and radical “nihilists” of the late 1850s and early 1860s.

Encyclopedias and lexicons of the 15-18th centuries in the collections from the Old and Rare Books Department of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The article presents the old printed encyclopedic and reference editions stored in different collections of the Old and Rare Books Department of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (VNLU) – incunabula, paleotypes, foreign old books, rare editions, editions in civil and Cyrillic font. The largest number among them is foreign old printed books, but information on domestic editions is also provided. The main goal of the publication is to draw the attention of specialists to these forgotten book monuments of the past and, if possible, to return them to scientific circulation. The methodology of the research and their subsequent quite brief characteristics involved structuring the information according to the chronology of book printing, importance in the society of the time, typological classification of publications, etc. For the convenience of further research work with these sources, each description of the monument is accompanied by a shelf number, assigned by the department. The study has revealed a significant amount and historical importance of encyclopedic and reference publications of the 15th and 18th centuries in the collections of a single specialized department of the library. It is reasonable to continue studying copies of encyclopedic editions of the 19th – early 20th centuries in the collections of the Old and Rare Books Department, as well as conducting a similar study in the collections of other specialized departments of the VNLU.

Ivano Luckevičiaus gudų muziejaus bibliotekos senųjų knygų paveldas / The Heritage of Old Books from in the Library of the Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum

The Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum was established in Vilnius over a century ago, in 1921. It was based on the documentary heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania collected by Ivan Lutskevich (1881–1919), historian, archaelogist and bibliophile, who also was a prominent activist in the Belarusian community in Vilnius. The holdings of the museum also contained various artifacts acquired by Lutskevich in archaeological expeditions and donated to the Belarusian Scientific Society in 1916. The reorganization of Vilnius museums that began in 1939 caused the complete liquidation of the Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum in 1945. At that time print publications and manuscripts from the holdings of the museum were handed over to the then Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. The museum’s library contained over 14 thousand volumes, with the collection of early print books (15th–18th centuries) consisting of about 600 items. The two-part Belarusian-language catalogue compiled in 1943 by the art scholar Vladas Drėma, museum custodian, contains 411 numbered entries for the books passed on to the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Based on this catalogue, which is now kept in the Library’s Manuscripts Department and on other sources, the article aims to examine the heritage of 15th–18th-century books kept in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library. The Drėmaʼs catalogue lists the old publications by century: one book from the 15th century, 24 from the 17th century; 293 from the 18th century (several of which might actually belong to the 19th century). There are 411 books in total. At present, we have been able to identify 224 15th–18th-century books (208 titles) that come from library of the Belarusian Museum: eight books from the 15th century, 21 books from the 16th century, 47 from the 17th century, and 144 from the 18th century. These statistical data, however incomplete, show that not all old publications have been described in Drėma’s catalogue. The collection includes rare printing masterpieces such as eight incunabula, the earliest of which is the Czech-language Biblia Bohemica published in Prague in 1488 and Biblia Latina printed in Basel in 1491 (these and other five incunabula are not listed in Drėma’s catalogue). The first entry in the catalogue is Pentecostarion (Триодь цветная), a liturgical book published in Cracow about 1493 by Schweipolt Fiol, pioneer of Cyrillic printing. Other notable entries are printing masterpieces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania such as Part 4 of Бивлия руска published by Francysk Skaryna in Prague in 1519, the Slavonic grammar by Meletius Smotrytsky published in Vievis at the printing house of the Holy Spirit Brotherhood in 1619, extremely rare publications by the Vilnius Jesuit Academy, Basilian, and other printing houses of those times. The Belarusian Museum’s collection of old books is notable for its linguistic and thematic diversity. Most of the books, about 45 per cent, are in Polish; 25 per cent (53 publications) are in Church Slavonic, Old Slavic and Russian; 15 per cent (30 publications) are in Latin; several publications each are in French (six) and German (two), one incunabulum is in Czech. The content of the books is discussed after dividing them into two groups of equal quantity: religious and secular literature. A list of so-far identified old books is provided at the end of the article. Keywords: Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum; heritage of old books; Vladas Drėma; manuscript catalogue; The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Rare Books Department.

Panoraminis Vilniaus planas (1581) ir jo sekiniai LMA Vrublevskių bibliotekoje / Panoramic Plan of Vilnius (1581) and its Derivatives in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

The renowned panoramic plan of Vilnius, Vilna Litvaniae metropolis, was for the first time printed in Cologne in 1581. It appeared in the third volume of Civitates orbis terrarum, an atlas of the world’s most important cities, the publication of which was initiated in 1572 by Georg Braun (1541–1622), Cologne church dean, geographer and publisher, and Franz Hogenberg (1535–1590), Flemish cartographer and engraver. The six-volume atlas was first released in Latin (1572–1617/1618), then in German (1574–1618), and finally in French (1579–1618). City images featured in this very popular atlas also were published as separate prints. The copper plates for these images were sold by Hogenberg’s heirs to the Amsterdam atlas publisher Johannes Janssonius (1588–1664), who published his own atlas in 1657. Later purchased by other cartographic publishers of Amsterdam, the plates kept being republished until completely worn out in the mid-18th century. The panoramic plan from this atlas is the earliest image of Vilnius that has reached us today. It features mid-16th-century Vilnius shown as if from a bird’s eye view – such was the tradition of depicting cities at that time. Researchers agree that this Vilnius image is not historically accurate and contains numerous errors. The creators of the plan are believed to have based their city image on an earlier work, probably by Italian cartographers, adding to it various travellers’ depictions of the then capital of the Grand Duchy. The Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds three copies of Vilna Litvaniae metropolis. They were all printed in the times of Braun and Hodenberg using the same copper plates. The earliest of them is the copy with the second part of the text in German. According to the bibliography Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, it may have been printed in 1582. Previously, this copy was in possession of Petras Klimas (1891–1969), Lithuanian statesman and bibliophile. It was received by the library currently known as the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences together with Petras Klimas’ archive (F 191) from the former Kaunas State University in 1950. The other two copies have no provenance marks. They presumably used to belong to the Wroblewski State Library, which was active in Vilnius in the interwar period. The second copy was published between 1588 and 1593; the third, between 1616 and 1623, both have Latin text. The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds several later derivatives of this panoramic plan of Vilnius. A several-times-reduced (16×24) panoramic plan was engraved by Georg Christoph Kilian (1709–1781) circa 1740 and published by the Bodenehrs, Augsburg engravers and publishers. A lithographic image of Vilnius in an even smaller format (17.5×13.5) was included in the history of Vilnius published by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887) in 1840. It was created in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Józef Ozębłowski (Oziębłowski, 1805–1878), which existed in 1833–1863. Three other plans of Vilnius deriving from the Vilnius image in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. One of them was redrawn at a smallish lithographic company belonging to the Vilnius City Board and active from 1877 to approximately 1915. Unlike the other derivatives, it contains not only objects copied from earlier Vilnius city images, but also new ones: the Rasos Cemetery, the Green Bridge, the Franciscan monastery, etc. – its creators attempted to bring it closer to their time. The two other Vilnius images are identical to the plan in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas. One of them was printed in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Notel Matz, which existed from 1873 to 1938, the other, at A.Transhel’s printing house in St. Petersburg, which was active in the second half of the 19th century – the early 20th century. These plans were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. They have so far been little studied and still await attention from researchers. Keywords: Braun-Hogenberg atlas; panoramic plan; Vilnius; copper engravings; lithography; Georg Bodenehr; Vilnius City Board lithography; Notel Matz; A.Transhel’s printing company.

Library of Profesor Ivan Samoylovych (1737–1783): Historical Destiny and Book Characteristic of its Fond

The library of the teacher and gymnasiarch of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Ivan Samoilovych (c. 1737–1783) is a little-studied aspect of the history of the KMA and an extraordinary phenomenon in the domestic historical library science. Until now, it has not been the subject of independent historical and library research. Samoilovich was the teacher of rhetoric, poetics, and German. The main source base for the study of his library is the registration list concluded after the death of the owner in 1783, which numbered 1,147 items, and old prints which are now stored in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the department of libraries’ and historical collections and in the collections of the rare books department. The bibliographic analysis of the library fund showed that the composition of the book collection reflects the professional activity of the owner and the range of his intellectual interests. The topics of the books cover a wide range of interests: editions of grammars, dictionaries, works used for translations from Latin and German, works on public speaking, works by ancient authors and European humanists of the Renaissance, works on philosophy, logic, theology, natural sciences, medicine, general and church history, pedagogy, library affairs, and fiction.

Moliиriana in the fund of the early printed and rare book department of the V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine: on the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great comediographer

Moliиriana in the fund of the early printed and rare book department of the V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine: on the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great comediographer

Moderniojo lietuvių parlamentarizmo istorija Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių bibliotekos dokumentuose

The object of the research presented in this article is the history (development) of modern Lithuanian parliamentarism in 1920–2020, i. e. a century from its emergence to this time. The sources for the research are documents and iconography related to modern Lithuanian parliamentarism kept in the Manuscripts and the Rare Books Departments of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences as well as on publications of relevant documents and scholarly research. The article aims to draw attention to less-researched issues of modern Lithuanian parliamentarism based on the documents kept in the Wroblewski Library. Documents on parliamentarism in 1920–1940 reveal the key stages of this period: initial efficacy, later problems, and eventual crisis. The interwar Lithuanian “sejmocracies” and the period of the voiceless Seimas is represented by various documents from the holdings of the Library: three photographs of the Founding Seimas, election proclamations and posters, socio-political texts by Kazys Grinius, invitations, certificates, etc. The iconography of Soviet “imitational” parliamentarism (election materials, photographs) is still awaiting researchers. Documents of various convocations of the Supreme Council of Soviet Lithuania can be found in the collection of one of the most prominent Soviet ideologists, Juozas Žiugžda (F275). The documentary heritage for the post-1990 period is more fragmentary and is just beginning to be collected. The documents on the modern parliamentarism in the three latest decades (1990–2020) can at present be found only in the Ona Voverienė collection (F397), while the election publications are kept in the ephemera collection of the Rare Books Department. Keywords: Founding Seimas; “sejmocracy”; voiceless Seimas; “period of the non-existent parliament”; the second stage of the modern parliamentarism.

Totoristika Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių bibliotekos fonduose

Tatar documentary heritage collections held in various holdings of the Wroblewski Library shed light on the history of one of the oldest national minorities in Lithuania, the Tatars. This article aims to look at old documents and Tatar printed heritage held in the Wroblewski Library, and at modern Tatar studies. It is particularly important to find and study iconography and egodocuments, which can provide researchers with plenty of valuable information. The first knowledge about the Tatars can be found in old chronicles, as well as travel accounts, historical works, and extant manuscript documents such as privileges, legal or religious papers. The Tatars assimilated linguistically, but retained their religious individuality – they remained Muslims and used Arabic script. Their written culture is closely related to religion – khamails, dalawars, kitabs, and semikitabs were needed to perform religious rites. The Tatar manuscripts were written in Arabic characters in the local languages, the prayer books served as a testimony to a family’s history. The Wroblewski Library holds a number of unique religious documents, starting with the kitab of Ivan Lutskevich and a khamail (prayer book) from the mid-19th century, and ending with recently-acquired copies of Tatar manuscript documents from a private collection. In the 19th century, a scholarly interest in the Tatar community grew; the numbers of intellectuals in their midst increased, and the Tatar identity strengthened. The Tatar publishing in Lithuania, developing along with the ethnic revival of the Tatar community, flourished in the first half of the 20th century. Vilnius gradually became the center of Tatar intellectual activity: the acclaimed scholar Prof. Stefan Bazarewski taught at Vilnius University; here existed the Turkology study circle led by Prof. Seraya Shapshal; it is in Vilnius that Tatar societies were founded and a museum was opened in 1929, and it is here that a number of works in Tatar studies and periodicals were published. The Vilnius Muftiate also engaged in publishing pursuits. From this period, the Wroblewski Library has numerous photographs featuring religious objects (mosques, cemeteries) and group photographs showing Tatar community members. World War II interrupted Lithuanian Tatars’ cultural and educational activity, their intellectuals were scattered or killed. Much of their valuable religious and cultural heritage was lost. Because of the war, the smallish Tatar community was divided into several even smaller ones, and their living and working conditions in Lithuania, Belarus and Poland differed. A considerable number of Tatars reassimilated, this time due to the influence of the Russian language. In the late 20th – early 21st century, the state of the Tatar community improved again, as there appeared new opportunities for education, culture, and religion. The Wroblewski Library houses one of the largest collections of Tatar documentary heritage in Lithuania, which is divided between the Main Collection, Rare Books Department and the Manuscripts Department. It consists of early Tatar documents, examples of their written culture and religious literature, and iconographic materials. These items have been copiously used by scholars. The library has also amassed a large number of recent works in Tatar studies in Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, and other languages, as well as research published across the world, whose variety of topic will hopefully attract the attention of the Tatar community, scholars, and all interested in Tatar studies. Keywords: Tatars; written culture; historical memory; Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; manuscripts.

Non refert quam multos libros, sed quam bonos habeas: Vilniaus evangelikų reformatų sinodo bibliotekos XVII a. knygos Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių bibliotekos Retų spaudinių skyriaus fonduose

This article aims to give an overview of the 17th-century documents that are now kept in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library and that belonged to the library of the Vilnius Evangelical Reformed Synod until February 1941. This library was established 465 years ago, at the time of the establishment of the Vilnius Evangelical Reformed Synod, Unitas Lithuaniae. The library had a difficult time surviving since its very establishment; it was burned, moved from Vilnius to Kėdainiai and also to Slutsk, a town where the Radvila princes set up some schools (the Reformers were deprived of a right to establish higher schools in Lithuania). Extant books from the library of the Slutsk Gymnasium shed light on how books in various scholarly disciplines were registered, classified, and marked. After the World War I, the library was returned to Vilnius, where it continued to be looked after, there were attempts to compile and publish its catalogue. In 1940, when Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union, the Vilnius Evangelical Reformer Synod was terminated, and its library was given over to the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, an institution established on the basis of the former Wroblewski Library. The war Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, which started on June 22, 1941, became an obstacle to the integration of the Synod library. There is no evidence as to how it was stored and handled during the war. During the retreat of the German army from Vilnius in July 1944, the building of the Synod library in Pylimo Street burned down (perhaps, it was set on fire intentionally). Information spread that the library had perished, therefore the books that had been saved in some way and emerged afterwards, were given over to various libraries, in spite of the fact that they were supposed to have been transferred to the Library of the Academy of Sciences. 320 items have been discovered in the holdings of the Rare Books Department. 126 of them constitute just three composite sets. Most of the extant publications are on religious topics and reflect the development of the Reformation. The majority of the documents are in Latin. Very few historical and fiction books are extant. However, that which remains makes it possible to grasp some realities of the 17th-century life and thus represents interesting and valuable heritage. Keywords: Vilnius Evangelical Reformed Synod; Synod library; Reformation; Slutsk Gymnasium; theological dispute.

Froben Prints and Polemics on Religion in Early Modern Eastern Europe

The article explores the Froben prints stored at the Rare Books Department of the Library of the Russian Academy of Science (Biblioteka Akademii Nauk) in Saint Petersburg. For three generations in the 16th century, Basel printers the Frobens influenced European intellectual life like no other publishing establishment, contributing to the spread of early Latin and Greek Christian literature, which determined both the development of theology and the humanities. Some copies of Froben prints are conspicuous for the history of their use which is intrinsically connected with various kinds of religious polemics in 16th and 17th century Eastern Europe. The focus of the article is the copies of Froben’s Opera omnia of St Augustine which underwent censorship in monastic libraries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th century. The article traces the history of a number of Froben copies which belonged to notable Polish Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries (Andrzej Trzecieski, Nicholas Radziwill the Black (“Czarny”), Andrzej Dobrzanski). The examination of the connections of Eastern European Protestants, which enabled vigorous exchange of books with Western Europe, bringing, for instance, a book from the library of the great Dutch cartographer Gerhard Mercator to the hands of a provincial Polish pastor, is carried out. Finally, the article addresses the marginalia left by Simeon of Polotsk on one of his books. These marginalia throw some new light on the question of Simeon’s genuine theological views. By examining the history of the copies from the Library of the Russian Academy of Science through the marginalia left in the 16th and 17th centuries by people of various religions, the article assesses Froben copies as a source on confessional and intellectual history of the period.

Raguvos parapijos demografiniai aspektai 1700–1800 metais

DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECTS OF RAGUVA PARISH IN 1700–1800 This article uses a demographic method to study the parish register of births at Raguva Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Most of these parish register records are stored in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Some of them have been digitized and published on the website www.epaveldas.lt. The chronological sample of the study consists of the eighteenth century (1700–1800) parish register records data, which recorded 10,071 individuals born during the analysed period: 4,891 women and 5,180 men. The tasks of the research are: to determine the distribution of births by gender and class, to determine the number of children born to married or unmarried women; identify the most popular names for each class and gender by separately examining individuals baptized with two or more names. Of the 10,071 births recorded during the period in analysis, 4,891 women and 5,180 men were identified. The distribution of children born by class is as follows: peasants – 9,688 (of which 4,715 girls and 4,973 boys), nobles – 383 (of which 176 girls and 207 boys). The names of 57 peasant women and 67 peasant men were identified during the study. The names of 48 women and 46 men of the nobility were identified. The most popular Christian names of peasant women were Kotryna, Ona, Dorotėja, Marijona, Elžbieta, Ieva, Barbora, Apolonija, Kristina; men – Jonas, Kazimieras, Juozapas, Jurgis, Jokūbas, Motiejus, Mykolas, Simonas, Stanislovas. The most popular names of noblewomen: Ona, Marijona, Kotryna, Teresė; men – Juozapas, Mykolas, Jonas, Ignotas, Antanas, Kazimieras. 95% names of the baptized individuals were common to both classes. Analysis of the sources revealed that 434 individuals were given 2 or more names. These are 225 peasant children (104 girls and 121 boys) and 204 nobility children (85 girls and 119 boys). Most actively two and more names were given in 1781–1800. Two names are common to both nobles and peasants; three names – more common among nobility. After analysis of the problem of giving a Christian name it can be concluded that only in 10% of cases the choice of a Christian name was determined by the names of godparents, 7% by parents' names and only 3% by the names of the saints of that day. Other reasons accounted for 0.1% of all naming cases. In as many as 80% of all cases the reasons for choosing the names have not been identified. After examining the data on the number of illegitimate children it was concluded, that in 1700 to 1800, 113 illegitimate children were registered in Raguva: 108 peasant children (50 girls and 58 boys) and 5 nobility children (2 girls, 3 boys). Most illegitimate children were born between 1761 and 1800. Keywords: demographics, births, metrics, name.

Marginalia in Parisian Historical Publications of the Second Half of the 16th Century in Russian and Franch Libraries

The article is devoted to the study of reader’s practices related to the several centuries of existence of French historical books of the second half of the 16th century, the books’ place in people’s lives and attitude to them. The study’s source base is represented by a body of identified book marginalia from the copies of Parisian publications stored in the National Library of France and the Rare Books Department (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library. The handwritten notes (396 marginalia have been identified and are being introduced into scientific circulation) that are dated belong to the second half of the 16th—20th centuries inclusive. In the second half of the 16th century, printed books in France became the determinant source of intellectual thought, and their role in the lives of educated people increased significantly. The spread of printed books, their influence on the minds of ordinary people and their authority in society contributed to the appearance of a large number of handwritten notes made by readers at different times and on different occasions.The author offers his own content-based classification of the body of marginalia identified by him and gives a detailed description of the studied material. There are three main groups of the marginalia: the records related to the content of the book, the records related to the book itself, and the records not related to the book. The first group consists of 2 types of records: textual records and comments. The second group is divided into 3 types: library records, owner’s records, and other informational records related to the content of the book. A separate group consists of the informational records that are not related to the book.The analysis made it possible to assess the information value and potential of marginalia as historical and psychological sources that allow (in combination with other sources) to study, in a historical context, the cultural and mental characteristics of people of different eras, the existence of books in society, and the book and library traditions of different regions of Europe.

Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

Adorned in Silk: The Use of Fabric in the Bindings of the Old Books Stored in Wroblewski Library at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

The article discusses the cloth-bound and decorated books stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and expands on the use of textile depending on the content of the book and its purpose.

Book Marks of the Personal Library of the German Bibliophile Prince George of Anhalt

For many years, the Rare Books Department (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library has been conducting up-to-date work on the description of ex-libris, which contributes to the disclosure of the Department’s collections. The main goal of this research is to identify, record, study, publish, and thereby show the variety and richness of the ownership marks found on books. This article is devoted to the book marks of the German bibliophile Prince George III of Anhalt (1507—1553) from the collection of the Russian State Library. In the Russian-language research literature, Prince George’s book marks have not been considered before. The highly valued private library, later named after the owner — “Georgs-Bibliothek”, used to be part of the Land Library in Dessau (Germany). A small part of this famous book collection came after World War II to the V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR and is now stored in the Book Museum. On the example of the small fragment of Prince George’s famous library, the article traces the gradual appearance and development of the unique ex-libris of this collection, reveals the literary and bibliophile interests of the owner, and establishes the circle of his communication. In the course of the study, about a hundred owner’s marks were recorded, thanks to which there were identified more than 120 publications from the personal collection of Prince George of Anhalt. The article presents the main types of its ex-libris (handwritten, gift, and super-ex-libris), which are reproduced and described in detail.

Children’s Books of the Great Patriotic War Period Stored in the Book Museum of the Russian State Library

The article endeavors to reconstruct and present a collection of children’s books published during the Great Patriotic War, stored in the Rare Books Department (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library. The term “collection” in this case is conditional, since children’s books of that period were not acquired specifically and are not stored as a separate independent collection. They belong to the three collections — Illustrated Children’s Books, Serial Publications, and A.K. Tarasenkov’s Collection. Such storage of books of the same subject in different collections has its own specifics.The conducted research considered books published strictly in 1941—1945. Both edge years — 1941 and 1945 — are presented in full, since the war, its premonition, beginning, end, and the features of life in the post-war months, had left their mark on the themes and design of both pre-war and post-war books.On the occasion of the 70th and 75th anniversary of the Victory, in May 2015 and June 2020, the Book Museum of the Russian State Library held two mini-exhibitions dedicated to children’s books of the Great Patriotic War period. The exhibitions introduced visitors to the publications of 1941—1945, as well as to literary works that had been published in the post-war period but written during the war, hot on the traces of the heroic events. Still, the books presented at the mini-exhibitions do not exhaust the entire volume of publications of that period stored in the Book Museum.The Rare Books Department has identified 204 items that can be combined in a thematic collection called “Children’s Books of the Great Patriotic War Period”. Due to some peculiarities inherent in this collection, we cannot draw any conclusions about the repertoire of children’s books of the war period in general, but we can picture the repertoire, geography and circulation in relation to fiction for children.

ПЕРВОПЕЧАТНЫЕ ТРАВНИКИ ГЕРМАНИИ ИЗ СОБРАНИЯ РГБ: НА ПУТИ К МАССОВОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ

Early printed herbals have a special place in the 15th-century book production as they were popular both with academics, including medical scientists and pharmacists, and with the common reader. The popular response to the mass production of herbal books made possible by the invention of printing left textual and linguistic evidence in the form of handwritten marginal notes. In the present study, six copies of illustrated herbals printed in Mainz by Peter Schoeffer in 1484 and 1485 are compared as to the subject, language and function of the marginal notes found in them. Five of these books are from the Rare Books Department of the Russian State (former Lenin) Library, the sixth copy from the Moscow University Library is used to enable better comparison. The analysis has shown that the types of marginal notes vary significantly depending on the owners’ social status, interest, background, and on the time and region. Marginal notes in Latin or Greek are considered from the point of view of their thematic (content) and chronological (dating) characteristics. As the result of many centuries of natural science, herbals were an important source of professional knowledge for academics, including medical scientists and pharmacists, of the time. Thematically, linguistically and paleographically, marginal notes of this type can be ascribed to professionals or students of natural sciences. Notes made considerably later than the incunabula era can in fact only be explained by an academic interest on the part of the reader (some notes date after 1700). Marginal notes made in German and, judging by the handwriting, dating closer to 1500 reflect work of common medical practitioners or even of lay readers, who used their herbals to cope with practical problems of their everyday life. These German marginal notes are of high interest as a source for German language history, as they contain synonymous names of plants, additional to those used in the printed text. The analysis of their form, dialect, and distribution proves that they offer valuable lexical material (regional names) in the semantic field usually scarcely documented in medieval literary texts. Those descriptions, which are indicative of region or dialect, show a distinct Southern German origin of their authors.

КНИГОЗБІРНЯ «СТУДІОНУ» У ФОНДАХ ЛЬВІВСЬКОЇ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ НАУКОВОЇ БІБЛІОТЕКИ УКРАЇНИ імені В. СТЕФАНИКА: ФРАГМЕНТИ ІСТОРІЇ, ПРОБЛЕМИ ВИВЧЕННЯ І ЗБЕРЕЖЕННЯ

Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv (VSNSL of Ukraine in Lviv) is considered as an inheritor and successor for major Ukrainian libraries and institutions that constituted its base consequently to geopolitical upheavals of first half of 20th century. These are books, manuscripts, old prints, periodicals, notes and fine arts collections etc. from the libraries of Shevchenko Scientific Society, People’s Home in Lviv, monasteries, private collections, as well as Studion’s Library collection, whose substantial part now is being dispersed along the shelves of VSNSL of Ukraine in Lviv. The author defined the role of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi and Klymentii Sheptytskyi in establishing and maintaining this biggest specialized scientific library in Galicia at that time. The paper describes the rise and evolution of the Studion’s Library collection drawing on archival documents and revealing main stages of its formation, outlines objectives that Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi determined for it and highlighted Metropolitan’s activity in church and social fields resulted in formation of national and cultural institutions. The author also defined the outstanding role of Studion’s in the religious life of Ukrainians. The Studion’s Library collection was officially integrated into Lviv Branch of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of USSR on February 12, 1940. So the dispersion of the once rich collection started. Now those books and periodicals are parts of Rare Book Department, Manuscript Department, Ucrainica Department, Exchange and Reserve Department, Department of European book of 19th–20th cc. and others. These collections were repeatedly examined within several bibliological studies conducted by the Library’s researchers. Thus, it is marked that unique collections of Studion’s like other historical libraries at VSNSL of Ukraine in Lviv need writing their history as well as their bibliographical reconstruction what is now composing one of main objectives of Library’s staff Keywords: Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi, Klymentii Sheptytskyi, the Studion’s Library collection, Byzantine Library.

The Congress of Working People Ukraine (January 1919) by the Leaflets Collection of the Old and Rare Books Department of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The Congress of Working People Ukraine (January 1919) by the Leaflets Collection of the Old and Rare Books Department of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

D.F. Krasitsky is a historian and a shevchenko scientist

The article is devoted to the scientific, pedagogical and literary activities of Dmitry Filimonovich Krasitsky (1901–1989) – the great-grandson of the genius Kobzar, who in the early 40s. worked in the Dnipropetrovsk State University, as Vice-Rector of the Dnipropetrovsk State University (1943–1944), Head of the Pulpit History Peoples of the Soviet Union (1943–1946). He was patriot of his native language, as evidenced by the materials of the Museum of the History of the Oles Gonchar Dnipro National University. A member of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine (1960), a known writer who devoted almost his entire adult life to studying the biography and creative heritage of Taras Shevchenko. The insufficient development of the problem necessitated the involvement of documentary materials from the Museum of the History of the Oles Gonchar National National University, a rare book department, which made it possible to investigate the problem. It is noteworthy that after a fruitful stay at Dnepropetrovsk State University, D. F. Krasitsky in 1946 moved to Kiev, where he worked as director, and later deputy director of the house-museum, T. G. Shevchenko. For more than 20 years he was a member of the journal “People and Light”, a member of the methodical sonnet of the “Knowledge” society, published more than 500 articles and essays on the problems of literary and shevchenko science.