Tanulmányok Budapest múltjából 33. 2006- 2007 (2007)

Tanulmányok - Perényi Roland: Mit olvas a pesti polgár? Kísérlet a Janny-család könyvtárának rekonstrukciójára

Perényi, Roland WHAT DOES THE METROPOLITAN CITIZEN READ? Attempt to reconstruct the library of the Janny family There is only scattered information about the exact content of a 19

th century civil private library, about the reading and book-shopping habits of the owners. It is very rare to find a private library still in one piece, to be examined. However it is still possible to reconstruct most of the private library of Janny, Gyula (1842-1916) the first hospital superintendent of the Erzsébet Hospital. It is still to be found mainly at the successors and partly in public collections. According to the present state of the library we can assume that it contained about 600 pieces containing books, journals, magazines. The survey deals in detail with 454 pieces. It became clear through the research that it's not enough to take a library as a hole. The books has to be distinguished by the family members who has used them and also the ones that are shared. In this case the wife's library is easy to separate, it mostly contains historical novels, in German with ornamental covers. The three children of the family, Gyula and Géza the boys were usually reading adventure novels and junior novel series, while Gizella the youngest, girl collected the moralizing girlish novels, typical at that time. A strongly German oriented collection, not missing the Hungarian national classics is to be found in the Janny family library. The great international classics are present just as the - at the time so popular novels and some of the realistic literature. Thanks to some bills remaining we can also get significant information about the book shopping habits of the family. Book buying was a regular outlay of the family: the head of the family bought books for a larger amount of money almost every month, the buys increased at the beginnings of the school years. It also turns out from the notes in the books that books were popular as presents among family members and friends as well.