Вера Бонева

The text traces the cult of being first, a seminal phenomenon at the time of the Bulgarian National Renaissance. The semantic fields are reconstructed which encompass the ideological units about the priority of Bulgarian’s medieval civilisation vis-а-vis all Eastern Orthodox Slavs. The dogged insistence is evoked of ingenious bookmen and tireless non-fiction authors concerning the priority of a number of 19th century Bulgarian developments in a chronological or regional aspect. We touch upon some of the shadows of the primacy of various texts from the Bulgarian National Renaissance left upon the humanities in our time.

The current text is a review of Anna Angelova's book „Bulgarian Oldprinted Editions 1806–1878: A study of the collection of the Sofia University Library „St. Kliment Ohridski“, 416 p., hardcover. The book includes two author's studies, a catalog of printed editions, stored in the library, and 734 handwritten notes from books and newspapers, left as written traces by owners, readers, and donors. The publication of the notes and a part of the author's analyzes are assessed as contributions to the history of the book. A number of criticisms have been formulated regarding the language normalization of manuscripts and titles and regarding the numerous typographical errors, which are noticeable in the book. My recommendation is for a more in-depth and extensive analysis of the studied corpus. Anna Angelova's book gives me a reason to keep insisting on a full digital corpus of the Revival editions and full-text publications of all old printed books on the Internet, including handwritten notes on them.