It is difficult to underestimate the importance of libraries in humanityâs history. Public libraries have guaranteed access to culture for those who could not afford books. Private libraries have served a similar function for a wealthy elite of bibliophiles and became a domestic status symbol. In book historical studies, the reconstruction of a private library is a fundamental step in the investigation of a variety of topics, including personal (reading) interests, book ownership, circulation and trade, and, more generally, the evolution, transmission and impact of ideas and knowledge.1 For the Dutch Republic, the abundance of extant book auction catalogues has made them a central source for scholars researching these topics, together with probate inventories, which at times contain references to books and the rooms where they were stored. However, as an ample body of research has shown, relying solely on these sources to draw conclusions about individual book ownership and reading interests is problematic.2
It is particularly challenging to establish the extent to which entries in auction catalogues correspond to the books owned by the person advertised on their title page. Moreover, both sorts of sources provide only a âsnapshotâ of the book collection, usually taken at the end of a personâs life. The dynamics leading to its creation remain unclear and untraceable: unanswered are questions about how certain books entered the collection, which ones exited before a catalogue was compiled, and when and why this happened. Moreover, these sources provide no evidence of the evolution of a given individualâs taste and interests over time, nor do they indicate potential âintrudersâ included around the time of the auction by heirs or publishers eager to sell their stock.3 Finally, if books or other printed or manuscript materials existed that an individual owned, read or borrowed from somebody else, there is no trace of them in these documents.
Because the extent to which auction catalogues genuinely represent a given collection is an open question, their usefulness in establishing firm conclusions on individual readers is limited. Likewise, the potentially partial record provided by inventories poses similar challenges. To reconstruct a book collection, scholars have therefore often retrieved or inferred the presence of additional books in a particular library by examining different sources. For artists and writers, one viable approach has been to analyse a personâs production and influences. Golahny, starting from the books mentioned in Rembrandtâs inventory drawn up on the occasion of the artistâs bankruptcy in 1656, derived other books that he might have read based on the subjects depicted in his paintings.4 In the case of the poet Jan Six van Chandelier (1620â1695), Schenkeveld-van der Dussen examined his poems to search for the authors mentioned to derive the books that he read.5 Only in exceptional cases do additional primary sources exist allowing for a more nuanced picture of an individualâs book collection. The most notable example for the Dutch Republic is the Leiden-born lawyer and book collector Johannes Thysius (1622â1653), whose will made his collection of about two thousand books available âtot publycque dienst der studieâ (âfor the public service of studyâ).6 The preserved family and library archive, with documents spanning the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, is a rich source for scholars aiming to reconstruct Thysiusâs library and his legacy.7
The present book unveils an important early modern private library that has been completely overlooked in the scholarly literature, notwithstanding abundant archival materials and other sources that would allow for a reconstruction. This is the library of Pieter de Graeff (1638â1707), Lord of Zuid-Polsbroek (south-west of Utrecht), Purmerland and Ilpendam (north of Amsterdam), alderman (schepen) of the city of Amsterdam and director of the Dutch East India Company in the Amsterdam chamber from 1664. In his case, the rich body of evidence to be discussed enables us to outline a profile of him as a book buyer, collector and reader. Moreover, it allows us to combine the reconstruction of his collection with that of the private library (boeken kamer) in his home, thus shedding light on an aspect of domestic book consumption in the early modern period heretofore little examined due to the lack of preserved information. What this book does as well is to highlight the limitations of book auction catalogues and probate inventories when they are the only sorts of documentation used to reconstruct a library. The additional primary sources that will be examined in the various chapters offer scholars working in this field a measure of what might be missing from the accounts of items recorded in those documents.
See e.g. Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The library. A fragile history (New York: Profile Books, 2021); R. Jagersma, H. Blom, E. Chayes and A.-M. Hansen (eds.), Private Libraries and their Documentation, 1665â1830 (Leiden: Brill, 2023); Paul G. Hoftijzer, âThe library of Johannes de Laet (1581â1649)â, LIAS 25, nr. 2 (1998), pp. 201â216; Frans A. Janssen, âThe library of Jacob de Wildeâ, Quaerendo 50 (2020), pp. 339â361; D. Pearson, âThe English private library in the seventeenth centuryâ, The library 13, nr. 4 (2012), pp. 379â399; J. Raven, âDebating bibliomania and the collection of books in the eighteenth centuryâ, Library and information history 29, nr. 3 (2013), pp. 196â209.
See most notably Bert van Selm, Een menighte treffelijcke boecken. Nederlandse boekhandelscatalogi in het begin van de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht: HES, 1987); Hannie van Goinga, Alom te bekomen. Veranderingen in de boekdistributie in de Republiek 1720â1800 (Amsterdam: De Buitenkant, 1999).
For example, the Leiden publisher Pieter van der Aa, who auctioned off his stocks under the name of the nonexistent scholar W. Snellonius (Paul G. Hoftijzer, Pieter van der Aa (1659â 1733). Leids drukker en boekverkoper (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), p. 85).
Amy Golahny, Rembrandtâs reading. The artistâs bookshelf of ancient poetry and history (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003).
Maria A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, âContouren van een collectie: Jan Six van Chandelier als Lezer en gebruiker van boekenâ, in J.A.A.M. Biemans (ed.), Boeken verzamelen. Opstellen aangeboden aan Mr. J.R. de Groot bij zijn afscheid als bibliothecaris der Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden (Leiden: Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, 1983), pp. 261â271.
See Paul G. Hoftijzer, âBibliotheca Thysiana. Tot publycque dienst der studieâ, Jaarverslag 2008 van de Koninklijke Brill NV (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
See âInventaris van de archieven van de Bibliotheca Thysiana en van leden van de familie Thijs en aanverwante families, 16deâ20steâ, Leiden University Library (http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:1918704); Wim van Anrooij and Paul G. Hoftijzer, Vijftien strekkende meter nieuwe onderzoeksmogelijkheden in het archief van de Bibliotheca Thysiana (Hilversum: Verloren, 2017); Esther Mourits, Een kamer gevuld met de mooiste boeken de bibliotheek van Johannes Thysius (1622â1653) (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2016).