A set of two volumes bound in a common scroll; The two large maps are excellently printed and are folded and hemmed at random places in the body of the book; Very good general condition of binding and book body.
Hr. Milev Map of the First Bulgarian Kingdom (679-972) and Map of the Tarnovo Kingdom in the time of Asenovtsi (1185-1257)
New receipt
Hr[isto] Milev Map of the First Bulgarian Kingdom (679-972). Company printing house "Worker", Plovdiv: 1909, 35 p.
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Hr[isto] Milev Map of the Kingdom of Tarnovo in the time of Asenovtsi (1185-1257). Company printing house "Worker", Plovdiv: 1909, 30 p.
A set of two volumes bound in a common scroll; The two large maps are excellently printed and are folded and hemmed at random places in the body of the book; Very good general condition of binding and book body.
The two books are the work of the patriot and post-liberation statesman Hristo Milev, mayor of Plovdiv until September 19, 1905, district governor of Stara Zagora until 1909, one of the founders of the Augusta Traiana Archaeological Society*. Hristo Milev's work is rare today - it can only be found in some of the largest Bulgarian libraries. However, none of them owns a copy of the books with such a rich history, documented with seals and bookplates.
The books were originally bought from the famous Plovdiv bookshop of Hristo N. Malinov, which obviously must have happened at the earliest during the wars of the second decade of the XNUMXth century. Since the seals and bookplates are placed only at the beginning of the scroll, it must it has been assumed that the binding of the two books into one volume took place immediately after their purchase. The seal of the Plovdiv bookstore of Hristo N. Malinov is placed at the beginning of each book.
As the first of the bookplates informs (in the narrow sense of the word), the books in a common body of books were acquired by the library of the Robert College of Constantinople on February 14, 1927, as evidenced by two identical seals on the title pages of the scroll. A bookplate of the same library with the library number is pasted on the second page of the endpaper, pasted to the front cover.
A second seal, repeated many times, informs that the books are a gift from "Prof. P. Voikov". Who he is can be learned from the annual reports of the college. One of the most prominent students at Robert College, Petar Voikov, already a Master of Arts, became a teacher of Bulgarian and [Old] Slavic* languages there. Apparently it was he who purchased and then donated the books to the school for the use of both the students and the other teachers.
The third time stamp is of "Abagar. Bulgarian church archive in Rome", where the two books undoubtedly went after the foundation of the archive in 1981. It is unknown when the bookplate of the Catholic priest Georgi Elderov, who is also the founder of the archive, was pasted on the third page of the endpaper to the front cover. Probably after his death in 2011, the scroll fell into the possession of those from whom the National History Museum was able to purchase this valuable and rare edition for its library.
*See more details about Hristo Milev. at Georgi Y. Georgiev Who is Hristo Milev? In: Hristo Milev After 130 years again: The massacre of Hadji Dimitrov I read and features from the life of the insurgents Oreshkov and Patrev. Propeller, Sofia: 2015, pp. 9-22
** See e.g. The American College for Girls at Constantinople. Reports for the year 1911-1912. Constantinople: 1912, p. 7
*** i.e. Old Bulgarian language.
Text: Ivan Petrinsky