MAJOR ACQUISITION SOURCES of RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BOOKS at HARVARD, 1920S-1950S1
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IRINA TARSIS (Cambridge, MA, USA) BOOK DEALERS, COLLECTORS AND LIBRARIANS: MAJOR ACQUISITION SOURCES OF RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BOOKS AT HARVARD, 1920s-1950s1 At the turn of the twentieth century, Harvard University did not pay great attention to Slavic literature. While there were some random acquisitions, the faculty was not earnestly specializing in the East European studies of the East European countries, so the Harvard libraries did not rush into these fields. The often prohibitive export laws and disorganized Russian book market just before and immediately after the October Revolution of 1917 also contrib- uted to the paucity of Slavic materials in the Harvard research collections. Extensive library nationalization and book sales undertaken by the Soviet authorities resulted in the chaotic dispersal of important collections, including some of the Russian imperial library holdings. The toppling of the tsarist re- gime and the installation of a new political order, coupled with the sudden availability of heretofore unavailable Russian publications in the West fol- lowing the revolution and the apprehension that one political and economic giant felt towards another led to the acquisition of Russian books, including those of imperial provenance, by Harvard, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and several other institution. As a result, the twentieth century was notable for a new and acute interest by American academic insti- tutions in collecting Russian and other Slavic publications. Today Harvard's Russian holdings represent a considerable portion of the university's collection and include a small yet significant number of books with book plates and stamps from the Russian imperial libraries at, for exam- ple, the Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, and Anichkov Palaces. Three Harvard li- braries that have substantial Russian holdings, including books of imperial association, are Harvard Law Library, Widener Library and Houghton li- 1. The author would like to thank Dr. Patricia Grimsted and curators of the Law Library and Houghton Library for assisting and commenting on her research. In preparing this article, the au- thor has benefited from the Douglas W. Bryant Fellowship Grant (2003) and a travel grant from the American Library Association. Parts of this work have been presented at the American Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Slavic Studies convention (Boston, Dec. 2004), a Houghton Li- brary Exhibit, "'Harvard's Love Affair with Russian Books': Israel Perlstein, Leading American Book Dealer in Slavic Books and Serials" (Dec. 2004), and at the ICCEES Conference in Berlin (July 2005). brary.2 Some books of imperial provenance were donated by Harvard alumni, namely Philip Hofer (A.B. 1921, A.M. 1929), later the founding curator of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Houghton Library, and Bayard L. Kilgour, Jr. (A.B. 1927); others were bought from Israel Perlstein (Fig. 1) and Simeon J. Bolan, two emigre booksellers operating from New York City, between 1928 and 1975. The first great proponent of Russian book collecting at Harvard was Archibald Cary Coolidge.3 A US diplomat as well as a Harvard faculty mem- ber and the first director of the Harvard College Library (1910-1928), he en- couraged the systematic acquisition of Slavic material both in law and hu- manities, and often purchased books for the university libraries with his own money from European dealers such as Martinus Nihjoff of the Netherlands. In addition to acquisition work, Coolidge fostered Harvard students' interest in Russian culture, among them young Hofer and Kilgour. In the summer of 1918, F.B. Adams, the head librarian of Harvard Law . School, wrote to Coolidge: [Rosco, Dean of the Harvard Law School] Pound thinks that he can get some money to be devoted to the purchase of Russian law books. I don't know where or why; when is now. I feel much interest in the subject and should be very glad to have such a fund to spend but I am puzzled about how to prepare myself. Although the Law library already had a minimal foundation of Russian law materials, including the Russian laws in French and German translations as well as the first part of the Russian code of laws, Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii (PSZ) [Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Em- pire], there were no reference materials and no procedures of acquiring Rus- sian books.44 2. It is possible that Harvard Medical and Business Libraries, established in the late nine- teenth century, have some copies of books of Russian imperial provenance; however, this infor- mation is not documented in the library catalogs and no information about acquisition survives. 3. William Bentinck-Smith, Building a Great Library: The Coolidge Years at Harvard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, 1976), and Robert F. Byrnes, "Archibald Cary Coolidge: A Founder of Russian Studies in the United States," Slavic Review, 37, no. 4 (Dec. 1978), 651-67. 4. After purchasing a complete collection of PSZ volumes, this set was de-accessioned. Some of the volumes in the Columbia University Library bear stamps of Harvard Library, which could mean that the de-accessioned set ended up in that collection. Today only a few other American libraries own PSZ volumes. According to RLIN and OCLC other copies are held by Yale Uni- versity, Columbia University Law Library, University of Chicago, and the University of Wiscon- sin at Madison. Usually they have ownership marks of different municipal or public libraries, such as the Commerce Institute, Cadet Corps, and Imperial Hermitage library. .