British Library Slavonic and East European Collections
The British Library Slavonic and
East European Section acquires material across the spectrum
of the humanities and social sciences. It is responsible for
obtaining and making available material published in the countries
of Central and Eastern Europe, and for material in the languages
of those countries published anywhere in the world.
This page provides an overview of the Polish Collections, illustrated
by specific examples. |
 |
|
|
Copyright © 1997, The British
Library Board
Polish dancers by Z. Stryjenska from Tance Polskie
(1938)
[Cup.1247.cc.21]
|
Contents
An overview of the Collections:
The beginnings, Pre-1800,
Post-1800
Catalogues, printed guides and other resources
| Polish material elsewhere in the British Library
Further information
The exact size of the Polish holdings is not known,
since, like other country/language holdings, they have no separate
catalogue and are dispersed within the rest of the collections.
There are approximately 21,400 titles in Polish in the current catalogue
(which covers items acquired since 1975).
The beginnings
The earliest works by Polish authors in the British Museum were
books written in Latin and published both in Poland and in Western
Europe. They included many distinguished authors: Nicolas Copernicus,
Martin Kromer, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and others. Among them is
the first book in Polish in the British Museum: the Psalms translated
by Maciej Rybinski and published in Gdansk in 1632.
The library of King George III presented to the Museum in 1823
included few books in Polish, the most notable being the "Radziwill"
Bible of 1563, once treasured property of Bishop J.A. Zaluski (1702-1774),
eminent bibliographer and co-founder of the first Polish national
library. But the foundation stone under the future Polish collection
was laid by Prince A.J. Czartoryski who in 1832 presented the Museum
with 80 books mainly on Polish history, literature on Polish affairs
in the 1770s-1810's and also including early 19th century editions
of classical Polish authors. The subsequent growth of the Polish
collection was part of the general expansion of the Library under
Panizzi's management. Ca. 1840 the firm Adolf Asher (with a branch
in St. Petersburg) became a major supplier of foreign books to the
Museum and the chief source of Polish acquisitions. By 1861 Polish
was one of the less known language collections believed by Thomas
Watts (the library's chief selector of foreign material and its
first employee familiar with East European languages including Polish)
to be the best outside Poland. It has remained such ever since.
Pre-1800 Collection
The antiquarian Polish collection, like the other country/language
collections in the British Library, traditionally includes material
published in the country concerned (within its frontiers at the
time of publication) and elsewhere in the language of the country.
Thus books written by Polish authors in Latin and other foreign
languages and published outside Poland, as well as foreign polonica,
are excluded. Within these limitations the Catalogue lists 2,231
titles. Among them are 4 Cracow incunabula and 292 16th-century
books. 880 titles date to the 17th century and 1055 to the 18th,
but both groups include an unspecified number of war destroyed items.
Early Cyrillic material printed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
is included.
There are many rare items, some of them not recorded in K. Estreicher's
Bibliografia polska. Some of the treasures are Zwierzyniec
(1562) and Zwierciadlo (1567-68) by the "Father of Polish
Literature" Mikolaj Rej, Elegiarum libri IV (1584) by Jan
Kochanowski, Commune incliti Polonie Regni privilegium
(1506), the only perfect copy known of the first Polish hortus
sanitatis, O ziolach i o mocy ich by Stefan Falimirz
(1534), Chronica Polonorum by Maciej of Miechow (1521),
"Radziwill" Bible (1563), the very rare Socinian New Testament (1577)
and the first Polish grammar, Polonicae grammaticae institutio
by Piotr Statoriusz (1568). Among the most notable 17th-century
items are Hippica by Krzysztof Dorohostajski (1603), Historica
Polonica by Jan Dlugosz (1615) and astronomical works by Joannes
Hevelius. The 18th-century collection includes such landmarks in
Polish history as Glos wolny by Stanislaw Leszczynski (1733),
O skutecznym rad sposobie by Stanislaw Konarski (1760-63)
and Ustawa rzadowa (1791), the first modern constitution
in Europe.
Some categories of material are particularly well represented:
(i) early Bibles, (ii) legislation issued by the 16th-18th-century
diets and (iii) Socinian literature published in Cracow and Rakow
(1577-1638) some of which is very rare.
Post-1800
After 1800 the collection rapidly expands. It is strong on 19th-century
material published in both Poland and by the émigrés in Western
Europe, mainly Paris, after 1830. The 19th century saw the growth
of learned societies in Poland, the chief of which was the Academy
of Sciences founded in Cracow in 1871 (from 1919 the Polish Academy
of Sciences). Its publications are well represented along with those
of other societies, academic libraries and universities.
The treasures of the 19th-early 20th-century collection include
first editions of the classics of science, philosophy, history,
literary criticism and other, as well as literary classics. Among
the first editions of the works of the great poets of the Romantic
Movement are Sonety (1826), Ksiegi narodu (1832,
with a dedication in the author's hand) and Pan Tadeusz
(1834) by Adam Mickiewicz; Anhelli (1838), Balladyna
(1839), Lilla Weneda (1840), Mazepa (1840) and
Beniowski (1841) by Juliusz Slowacki and Nieboska komedia
(1835) and Przedswit (1843) by Zygmunt Krasinski. First
editions of later classics include works by Norwid, Prus, Zeromski
and Wyspianski, as well as the first book edition (1896) of the
most translated Polish novel, Quo vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz,
the first Slav to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1905).
The 1918-39 period, with its economic crisis, brought a sharp
decline in the intake of Polish material and only in the 1960s and
70s were the gaps filled in. In 1940 a large amount of Polish material
in the fields of theology, the arts and also periodicals was destroyed
by bombs. Replacements have been acquired wherever possible. After
1945 and until the effects of the momentous political changes of
1989-90 were felt in all aspects of Polish life, including publishing,
exchange relations with academic libraries, learned societies and
universities were gradually extended and most of the Library's material
published in Poland was acquired in this way. As a result, holdings
of academic monographic series are particularly strong. The substantial
and influential output of the London based émigré publishing houses
was acquired on copyright deposit whereas that appearing elsewhere
was selectively purchased. In addition we have an important collection
of independent publications, books, newspapers and pamphlets produced
underground from the mid-1970s onwards and known as the "Solidarity
collection". The collection numbers ca. 500 books, ca. 430 serial
titles (most very incomplete) and ca. 250 items of ephemera - posters,
flyers, etc. Only about 500 books have been fully catalogued to
date (May 1996). Anyone interested in this collection should contact
the Polish curator for further information.
Since 1990, there has been a gradual move away from exchange agreements
towards purchasing material where possible, but we still aim to
cover, as completely as budgets will permit, the output of academic
and scholarly publishers along with material published by commercial
publishers which is likely to be of interest to researchers in the
fields of humanities, social sciences and belles-lettres. Official
publications including the proceedings of the Sejm and the Senat,
Monitor polski, Dziennik ustaw and statistical publications are
also acquired. In 1994-5 we acquired 1793 monographs and over 1000
periodical and irregular serial titles.
Catalogues, printed guides and other
resources
- Solidarity and other Polish clandestine publications in
the British Library (London: British Library, 1985)
- Swiderska, Hanna. Polskie zbiory w British Library
(Kultura, no. 6, 1982)
- Szkuta, Magda. Polskie zbiory w British Library (Notes
Wydawniczy, no. 8, 1997)
- Zmroczek, Janet. 'A national library for the Poles in exile':
the development of the Polish Collections of the British Museum
Library in the Nineteenth Century (Solanus, Vol. 15, 2001)
- Polish internet resources
- Jews in Poland: a select bibliography
of recent works in the British Library
- Slavonic microform resources
- Index to the Slavonic and East
European pages
- Integrated Catalogue
- Union
List of Slavonic and East European Newspapers in British Libraries
