Selected Special Collections
Russian Imperial Collection
Books from the libraries of the Russian imperial family
View images from the collection In the early 1930s, 2,600 volumes from the book collections of the Romanov
family were purchased by the Library of Congress through a New York book
dealer. Variously called the Winter Palace Collection, the Tsar's Library,
and (more accurately) the Russian Imperial Collection, these elaborately
bound volumes have been assigned, for the most part, to the Rare Book and Special Collections
Division. The collection includes eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
documents, biographies, works of literature, and military, social, and administrative
histories, and reflects the reading interests of the imperial family and
the types of publications they received as gifts. Books in English, French,
and German are well represented, although the majority of the publications
are in Russian. The volumes carry the bookplates of Alexander III, his wife
Maria Fedorovna, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, their son Aleksei
Nikolaevich, and other family members.
Two other divisions maintain significant portions of the original purchase.
The music from the collection -- largely nineteenth century Russian scores
-- has been integrated into the rare book collection of the Music Division and includes a presentation
copy of the first edition of the full score of Glinka's Ruslan i Liudmila (1878),
prepared as two volumes and bound with an added dedicatory leaf, and the
1894 edition of Rimsky-Korsakov's first opera Pskovitianka.
The 1931 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress highlights
the most important music items.
The Law Library received copies
of military laws, laws regarding the abolition of serfdom, revisions of civil
and criminal laws, and various texts on special legal subjects. The legal
titles are listed in the 1931 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress and
are now part of the holdings of Russian legal sources and literature in the
European Law Division.
Library of Congress, Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, 1931,
p. 38-42, 137-142, 223-225; 1932, p. 29, 111-115.
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