Several remarks concerning auction catalogues as source materials for research on private book collections

Abstract

Among the sources that enable researching readership and book collecting in the former centuries auction catalogues are the materials that require careful scrutiny. On Polish territories, fi rst book auctions appear the sixteen-seventies in Gdańsk, and then in other cities of the Commonwealth. Until the end of the 18th century, nearly 700 auctions took place, approximately half of which concerned books from private collections. The preparations for an auction encompassed compiling a catalogue, usually published in printed form. 120 such auction catalogues are extant in Polish and foreign archives. They provide excellent data concerning private libraries, chiefl y either no longer existent or available in dispersed fragments. Nevertheless, the interpretation of these sources can be diffi - cult. They beg questions such as: was the collection put on auction as a whole? were the books in the appendices to the catalogues parts of the auctioned collection, or did they belong to somebody else? Sometimes, these questions can be answered thanks to other sources like press advertisements, and above all by archival materials.