Catalogs of the Publishing House of Maurycy Wolff as a Source on the History of Children’s Books in Russia

Abstract

Maurycy Wolff is one of the first Russian publishers who chose literature for children and youth as their “specialty”. The source base letting study of this aspect of his activity includes documents of the Joint Stock Publishing Company by M. Wolff (Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg); M.Wolf’s personal fund (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art); public anniversary reports for the 10th and 25th anniversary of the company; polemical articles and notes in periodicals; catalogs and bookstore invoices. The article focuses on the latter type of sources. The work provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Wolff’s catalogs from 1856 to 1897. The article reveals the dynamics of the number of publications for children; their number is correlated with other genres and types of literature. The main trends of Wolff’s publishing practices are identified. They involve his awareness of activities in the field of children’s literature as a special social mission; implementation of the practice of book classifications according to children’s age and levels of a child’s reading skills; publication of richly illustrated editions as a way of solving special aesthetic tasks: expanding of the content of the catalogs (detailed abstracts, quotations from works, expert opinions, etc.) to purposefully influence the tastes of the Russian public; perception of the catalog as a communication tool with various social strata of potential buyers (parents, heads of educational institutions, residents of capitals and provinces, wealthy and poor citizens, etc.).