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 Romanian Collections,
illustrated by specific examples.
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Copyright © 1996, The British
Library Board
Coat of arms of Wallachia
from Gospels in Slavonic,
printed in Trigoviste by Macarie in 1512 [C.25.l.1]
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Contents
Romanian Collections: an overview
| Moldovan (Moldavian) Collections: an overview
| Catalogues and printed guides | Romanian
and Moldovan material elsewhere in the British Library
Romanian Collections
The British Library's holdings of Romanian books built up over
the last 150 years, are among the most extensive outside Romania.
The exact size of the Romanian 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 7,700 titles in Romanian in the H&SS Current Catalogue
(which covers items acquired since 1975).
Although early-printed Romanian books are poorly represented in
the collections, a small number of them were acquired by the Library
in the 19th century. These include the third oldest Romanian imprint:
Gospels in Church Slavonic (1512), printed in Tirgoviste
by the Serbian monk Macarie, and Sbornik (Minei, Brasov,
1568), a rare hagiography, in Old Church Slavonic, printed by the
Transylvanian deacon Coresi. A number of 17th- and 18th-century
first editions are also worth mentioning: the first Wallachian code
of laws, Indreptarea legii (Tirgoviste 1652); three works
by Dimitrie Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia: Divanul sau gilceava
inteleptului cu lumea sau giudetul sufletului cu trupul. (Iasi,
1698), the first Romanian philosophical writing published in Iasi;[Historia
incrementarum atque decrementarum Aulae Othomanicae] The
History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire, printed
first in London in 1734, translated into English by N. Tindal from
the author's own manuscript; [Descriptio Moldaviae] Beschreibung
der Moldau (Frankfurt, Leipzig, 1771), with the first Romanian
map of Moldavia.
Two notable works of the early 19th century bear Buda imprints:
The first printed grammar of the Romanian language by George Sincai:
Elementa linguae Daco-Romanae sive Valachicae (1805), followed
in 1812 by Petru Maior's Istoria pentru inceputul romanilor
in Dachia, an influential historical study of the origins of
the Romanian people.
There is a fair coverage of most of the fields in which the library
collects, and good runs of the publications of the Romanian Academy
of Sciences. These include first editions of 19th-century Romanian
writers, chiefly under the editorship of Prof. Ion Bianu. In the
middle of the 19th century, Vasile Alecsandri personally presented
the British Museum with several of his poetic and dramatic works.
Many scholarly periodicals of this period are missing, but the
collection does include three important publications:
Dacia Literara (Iasi, 1840) - [Edited by M. Kogalniceanu].
Convorbiri Literare (Iasi, 1867) - [Edited by Iacob Negruzzi].
Pruncul Roman (Bucuresti) no. 1-39 - [Edited by C.A. Rosetti
and E. Winterhalder, published during the 1848 revolution].
Official publications still show gaps despite efforts to fill
them, often by microfilms of the originals.
While exporting restrictions imposed by the Romanian authorities
after 1945 considerably reduced our antiquarian intake, some post
war material received by exchange has been gradually filling in
the gaps in the Library's early 20th century holdings. Major Romanian
authors are represented by collected editions of their single works.
From the beginning of the 1960s priority has been given to acquiring
current material of Romanian interest in the humanities and social
sciences, published in Romanian or in languages of ethnic minorities:
Hungarian, German, Serbian, etc. Romanian publications are now regularly
received by exchange with the National Library, Bucharest University
Library, the Library of the Academy of Sciences and a number of
provincial university libraries.
Over 800 serials are taken and ca. 700 monographs are acquired
annually.
In the light of the political changes of the late 1980s the collections
now include previously forbidden, unpublished works, printed ephemera
(election literature) and a number of independent newspapers.
Moldovan (Moldavian) Collections
Books from the historical province of Moldavia have been acquired
by the British Museum Library before and since the annexation of
Bessarabia and the formation in 1944 of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republic. The collections include early 19th-century official publications
as well as works reflecting changes in the history of the province.
Works of the Moldavian born Romanian chroniclers Grigore Ureche,
Miron Costin, Ion Neculce or the writers and poets Vasile Alecsandri,
Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creanga, published in the official Cyrillic
script as classics of the Moldavian SSR, are also available in the
collections. Of course the original Romanian editions of these works
historically form part of the Library's Romanian Collections. There
is an extensive coverage of Russian and Moldavian scholarly works
published by the Academy of Sciences of the Moldavian SSR.
The larger part of printed material from the Moldavian SSR is
in Russian. Since the proclamation on 3 September 1990 of the Republic
of Moldova, however, the Romanian (Moldavian) language has regained
its official primacy in the Roman alphabet, used in education, the
legal system and in cultural publications. Moldavian books, periodicals
and newspapers of research value in the humanities and social sciences
continue to be received on exchange, offering an independent spirited
reappraisal of events of the past 50 years.
Catalogues, printed guides and other
resources
