Landlord libraries in the provincial culture of the Central Black Earth Region (review of research interpretations and concepts)

The organization and existence of manor libraries in pre-revolutionary Russia as a condition for the transmission and dissemination of the culture of reading among the nobility remains an important issue of study and thus remains relevant at the present time. The pre-revolutionary historiography of the book collecting of estate owners, dedicated to estate libraries, both at the allRussian and at the regional level, is considered. The features of the formation and development of book collections are characterized, the problems of studying the circle of reading of the nobles are indicated. The aspects of the influence of the socio-political situation on the study of book collections, which were most affected in the 20–60s of 20th century are indicated. The modern stage of development of the historiography of the noble manor libraries of the Central Black Earth Region, including the distribution of foreign book collections in them, is analyzed. The applied analytical and interpretive method made it possible to “inscribe” the personal libraries (or their fragments) of the region into the general panorama of scientific ideas about the phenomenon of a personal library. The structural-component method made it possible to present the owners’ meetings as a complex communication system, the basis of which was the “book-reader” relationship. An analysis of the historiography of the problem shows a variety of research approaches to the characteristics of private collections, a wide variety of author’s interpretations of the history of the formation of individual libraries of the nobility.