Overview
The Fürstliche Bibliothek Corvey (English: Corvey Library) is a princely library in the Princely Abbey of Corvey, a former Benedictine abbey, near Höxter in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It consists of around 74,000 volumes and is one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in Germany. The library houses one of the world's largest collections of Romantic literature (and especially strong in the period after 1815) and the largest collection in the world of "popular fiction in English between 1798 and 1834". Stephen C. Behrendt, the George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, has praised the Corvey's "vast archive" of "uncommon, scarce, and even unique materials" which will assist scholars researching "British Romantic and early Victorian literary culture".
History
Victor Amadeus, Landgraf of Hesse-Rotenburg (1779–1834), who was the Prince of Corvey from 1815 and Duke of Ratibor from 1821, and his wife Elisabeth (Elise), the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1790–1830), were both bibliophiles and founded the library in the early 19th century. Their descendants and successors have been the owners of Corvey Castle and its library until the present day.
The collection
This library houses one of the largest collections of Romantic-era literature in the world. Thanks to the "eccentric buying policy" of the library's founder, Victor Amadeus, and his wife, it also contains a collection of books which were usually missing in other aristocratic or publicly owned libraries of that era: popular novels. That genre of books were in that period regarded as worthless ephemera, to be read by ordinary people and then cast aside. The Corvey's unique collection of popular novels were published in the years 1798–1834 and were mostly in the English language. It included not only rare books but several unique volumes. (cancerous damage to our library) and supplemented the collection by adding costly literary editions and works of German literature while not disposing of the popular fiction.
The library building consists of fifteen halls and has been outfitted with 200 bookcases made of different types of wood such as walnut, curly maple and cherry. The building was designed in the style of the Biedermeier and late classicism.
Projekt Corvey
After the death of Victor Amadeus and his wife, the library's unique collection lay mostly forgotten until the 1980s when scholars came across it and realised its "historical and literary significance". The University of Paderborn established the Projekt Corvey (English, "Corvey Project") which started cataloguing the collection and produced several extensive series of microfiches on the library's holdings of belles lettres, travel works, history, and biography, enabling scholars across Germany and the world to study the library's holdings without having to travel to Corvey. In the English speaking world, several Corvey based research projects have been set up, including the Corvey Project at the Sheffield Hallam University, and the Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska.
Mary Meeke and Charlotte Dacre, who were hugely popular in their time but, unlike Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe and Maria Edgeworth who wrote in very different genres and styles, had since been largely forgotten.
Further reading
* Revised and expanded versions of papers originally delivered at the Third International Corvey Symposium, which was held at the University of Paderborn in 1997. *
External links
* * Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection at WorldCat * Nomination file 1447 – UNESCO World Heritage Centre – report recommending nomination of Corvey Abbey as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and giving details of the Library * Corinne – rare books and forgotten authors from the Corvey collection