Society and book culture: The exhibition, dedicated to the collector of books A. A. Titov, in Saint-Petersburg

December 16, 2014 in the Department of the National Library of Russia (Saint-Petersburg) is opened the exhibition “Jealous collector of antiquity: to the 170^th birth anniversary of A. A. Titov (1844-1911).

Andrei Alexandrovich Titov – is philologist, ethnographer and regional specialist, successful entrepreneur, representative of the merchants of Rostov Veliky, who collected a unique collection of manuscript books. This was the largest private collection of manuscripts in the Russian Empire of more than 4, 5 thousand manuscripts of the XIII-XX centuries.  The most valuable collection was donated in full to the Public Library (now the National Library of Russia).

For the first time at the exhibition are presented unique manuscripts – ancient parchment books, valuable and rare monuments of democratic literature, illustrative syndics, and interesting historical and ethnographic materials. The collection of manuscripts, collected by Titov, affects not only   with the wide chronological coverage of monuments, but also a variety of subjects.

Among the exhibits there are letters of Andrei Alexandrovich to figures of Russian science and culture (historian and archaeologist Ivan Vasilievich Pomyalovsky, ethnographer and literary critic Alexander Nikolayevich Pypin), as well as newly discovered documents from the archive of the NLR, related to the history of acquisitions of Titov collection to the Public Library.

The exhibition reveals the multifaceted activities of A. A. Titov as a vivid example of serving to public interests, the restoration, the protection and museum activity of architectural and art monuments, the preservation and research of the manuscript heritage – archival documents and manuscript books.

The opening of the exhibition in the Department of Manuscripts is accompanied with the presentation of virtual version of the exposition at the website of the NLR.