
"Printed Materials, 1878-1944" Collection
The National History Museum stores about 1300 books, brochures, albums, leaflets, posters, sheet music, scores, etc., published in the period after the Liberation until 1944.
Publications in Bulgarian prevail, but there are also those in French, German, English, Italian, Serbian, Czech and other languages. The collection is extremely diverse and the exhibits in it are difficult to categorize, but we can still outline several groups present in it:
Official publications of the authorities - reports, regulations, normative acts, jubilee collections of the ministries of the Bulgarian principality/kingdom, stenographic diaries of the National Assembly, etc.
Military literature - publications of the Military Historical Commission at the Army Headquarters, as well as numerous domestic and foreign publications reflecting Bulgaria's participation in the Russo-Turkish War of Independence, the Serbian-Bulgarian War, the two Balkan Wars, the First and Second World Wars.
Educational literature - textbooks, reading books and aids used in the educational system of Bulgaria during the relevant period.
Scientific and popular scientific literature, mainly devoted to Bulgarian history, geography, culture, way of life, local studies, biographies of famous people, etc.
Artistic, children's, encyclopedic, etc. literature - published in relatively large circulation by Bulgarian and foreign authors with different themes.
The collection also contains books from the personal libraries of Elisaveta Bagryana, Hristo Vakarelski, gen. Nikifor Nikiforov, Valko Chervenkov and others.
There are also particularly valuable and rare publications such as the book "Commemoration of the Holy Anointing of H.C.V. prince Boris Turnovski, February 2, 1896", printed by the prominent book publisher Hristo Bachvarov, creator of the first Bulgarian paper factory in Belovo. The book published in 1896 describes what happened in the church of "St. King" anointing of the heir to the throne of the Bulgarian throne, is a luxurious edition for its time and today is an exceptional bibliographic rarity.