European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection

One of the most important literary discoveries of the second half of the twentieth century was the recovery of the spectacular library of more than 72,000 volumes, covering a broad range of subject areas, that was collected during the first half of the nineteenth century by Victor Amadeus, the Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg (17791834), and housed at his castle (Castle Corvey) near Paderborn, Germany. In real terms this collection contains over 2 million printed pages of English-language works, many of them comprising multiple volumes. The Corvey Collection thus constitutes one of the most important collections of British Romantic-era writing in existence anywhere. The extent of its scholarly significance is indicated, for instance, by the considerable number of exceedingly rare publicationsand even numerous previously unknown worksby British writers (and women writers in particular, whose works comprise over 1,000 of the titles) who were active during the Romantic period. In addition to this remarkable trove of English-language literary texts, Gale's Corvey Collection of European Literature also includes 3,658 works in French (including more than 500 by women) and 2,653 works in German, all of them dating primarily from the period 1790 to 1840.