Book Sales Catalogues
of the Dutch Republic, 1599-1800
Catalogue numbers 1-3748 (Instalments 1-21)

Contents of the Guide

The Guide comprises short title descriptions of all book sales catalogues that have been microfilmed within the framework of the project Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic, 1599-1800. This project encompasses printed catalogues issued as independent publications within the present frontiers of the Netherlands and its former colonies before the year 1801.

All catalogues described in the Guide have been published on microfiche by the Leiden microform publishers IDC. The main purpose of the Guide is listing all catalogues published in this way, but apart from that, it constitutes a valuable bibliographical tool in itself.

Both the microfiche project Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic, 1599-1800 and its Guide are results of the Bibliography of Dutch Book Sales Catalogues 1599-1800. The Bibliography and the Guide are compiled by H.W. de Kooker (Department of Dutch Language and Culture, Leiden University ). Both the Bibliography and the Guide are work in progress. Some 1,000 of the c. 4,470 book sales catalogues recorded in the Bibliography of Dutch Book Sales Catalogues are still awaiting microfilming.

Transcriptions of texts in Hebrew have been kindly provided by Dr. K. Jongeling, Department of Hebrew and Aramaic Languages and Cultures of Leiden University.

By book sales catalogues are meant auction catalogues of

  • private libraries
  • anonymous collections of books
  • booksellers' retail stocks
  • booksellers' wholesale stocks
  • circulating libraries
  • institutional libraries
  • atlases (collections of maps and prints)
  • reading club libraries
  • regimental libraries

    as well as

  • retail stock catalogues (including the catalogues published abroad by booksellers who were active both in the Republic and in other countries)
  • wholesale stock catalogues (as above)
  • sales catalogues of private libraries
  • catalogues of book sales by raffling

    Some closely related kinds of catalogues and lists have been included

  • catalogues of private libraries
  • catalogues of circulating libraries
  • the forerunners of Dutch national bibliography
  • price lists (enumerations of auction proceeds per lot)
  • satirical (auction) catalogues


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