History of private libraries of the Tambov Governorate in the research literature

We actualize the problem of studying private book collections of the estate libraries of the Tambov Governorate of the late 18th – early of the 20th centuries as a cultural environment elements. In the context of the special value of the Russia’s possessory libraries, the novelty of the work is determined by a comprehensive study of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and contemporary historiography. Interest in the book collections of the Tambov Governorate noble libraries is due to their importance as the book culture monuments of the 18th–19th centuries, their importance for verifying the private manors history. We show that among the works of pre-revolutionary historiography the history of personal libraries was considered a specific problem. Authors of that time were interested in questions of the book trade, the organization of free typographies, the largest libraries history. As part of the literature of this period analysis, we consider the works of N.A. Rubakin, I.I. Dubasov, K. Bogoyavlensky, I. Dobrotvorsky, G. Speransky, O.S. Lavrov, V. Simonov. Consideration by Soviet historiography the problem of private libraries formation made it possible to reveal the dominance of ideological attitudes in the cultural life assessments of the Russian province. We study the works of P.N. Chermensky, M. Belokrys, A.S. Chernov, N.I. Romakh. We reveal the contribution of Soviet authors to the study of the private libraries activities, the private collections reconstruction, the problems of reading culture of individual owners. Consideration of the contemporary period works is based on the latest results analysis of the identification of book monuments. We analyze the work of the Tambov Regional Universal Scientific Library named after A.S. Pushkin staff, who studies the works collection of L.A. Voeikov, G.R. Derzhavin, A.D. Khvoshchinsky and A.N. Nortsov.