Prohibited Russian editions of the second half of XIX-th century in the library of count P.A. Valuev

The article is dedicated to the study of personal library of count P.A. Valuev (1815-1890). It includes a collection of Russian publications of the second half of 19th century prohibited by censorship. The results of a study of these publications are presented in the article. The main task in this case was to fully reveal the features of this collection and correlate them with the personality of the owner. The methodological basis of the study is the sociocultural and historical-literary methods. In 1885 the library of P.A. Valuev was acquired by the Ministry of Public Education for Tomsk University. Presently it has about 2600 copies of books in Russian and foreign languages (German, French and English). Subjects of publications in Russian reflect Valuev's versatile state activities. Paradoxically, but there were ten publications in his library that were prohibited by censorship for circulation in Russia. The information on the activities of Valuev as a Minister of the Interior is briefly given, when in the 1860s he led the censorship reform in Russia. The main attention in the article is given to the history of publications, the reasons for their prohibition and destruction are revealed. When studying prohibited books from the Valuev's library, the features of these books were identified. All of them are bound on his order in the same half-leather bindings. There are owner's records on the title pages indicating the place of the book in the bookcase and the shelf, which tells about Valuev's attentive attitude to his books. In all the books examined, the margins of many pages contain vertical notes in red pencil, as well as underlining of individual words and sentences in the text. The study of copies of books that survived from censorship destruction showed that the notes contained in them correspond to notes in copies of censors. The data presented in the article show that many copies were received by Valuev from the Main Directorate for Press, which is directly related to his official activity. The books left by him in the library were of interest to him outside the scope of this activity. Thus, the considered unusual collection of books provides additional insights about the interests, and, accordingly, about the personality of a prominent statesman of Russia in the second half of the 19th century - P.A. Valuev.

Keywords

Authors

References