ON THE RESEARCH OF SAMUEL BOGUMIL LINDES PRIVATE BOOK COLLECTION (Z badan nad ksiegozbiorem prywatnym Samuela Bogumila Lindego)

The inventory of Samuel Bogumil Linde's possessions taken in September 1847 after his death included books: 1024 works in 1328 volumes. The inventory did not include a detailed list of books, just a general number of works and volumes in eleven language groups and their value. All the books from the inventory were sold. Some of them (260 works in 289 volumes) were purchased by the Library of the University of Warsaw and catalogued in 1855. The author undertook the effort of identifying the books from Linde's private collection shelved till today in the University Library in Warsaw. Linde did not mark his books and left no traces of having read them, therefore the only indication that a particular book comes from his collection is the price, corresponding to the entry in the inventory from 1855, written in pencil on the cover, inside the cover or on the title page. The author succeeded in identifying 125 works, i.e. 48.1% of the books entered in the inventory in 1855, which constitutes 12.2% of the books entered in the inventory taken after Linde's death. S.B. Linde collected book ever since his university days in Leipzig. He worked for 40 years in libraries, heading them (Jozef Maksymilian Ossolinski's library, the library in the Lyceum in Warsaw, Public Library at the University of Warsaw) and treated their collections as his own. He acquired books for his private library, buying them, also in subscription, and receiving as gifts, frequently with printed or handwritten dedications. A Russian historian, Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin, for several years offered to buy Linde's library, mainly the manuscript of 'Comparative Dictionary of Slavic Languages'.