“THE LIFE WORK OF EGOR EGOROV”: THE FIRST RESULTS OF A SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK COLLECTION (Anisimova T.V. Catalogue of Slavic-Russian manuscripts from the collection of E.E. Egorov / Ed. by Yu.S. Belyankin. Moscow, Pashkov Dom, 2017. Vol. 1. 374 p.; 2019. Vol. 2. 335 p.; 2021. Vol. 3. 490 p.)

Анализируется научное описание 300 рукописных книг из собрания Е.Е. Егорова, подготовленное сотрудником Российской государственной библиотеки Т.В. Анисимовой. Собрание, хранящееся в отделе рукописей (ф. 98), имеет исключительную ценность для изучения книжной культуры средневековой Руси. Рассмотрены структура и методика описания, информативность представленных сведений. Показано, как благодаря тщательной работе археографа могут быть уточнены или даже изменены представления о датировке или происхождении рукописных книг собрания. Отмечен высокий профессиональный уровень издания, выполненного с опорой на результаты актуальных научных исследований. The review is devoted to the scientific description of manuscripts from the collection of E.E. Egorov, prepared by T.V. Anisimova, an employee of the Russian State Library. The three published volumes cover the first 300 manuscripts (100 in each volume) of a collection that includes over 2000 items and is of exceptional value for the study of the book culture of medieval Rus’. The bulk of the described handwritten books date back to the 15th–17th centuries. These are liturgical books and ecclesiastical writings (homilies, sermons, commentaries on holy scriptures, hagiographies of saints), the content of which is closely related to the annual liturgical cycle. Many of the books are remarkable for their decoration (the publication is accompanied by colored illustrations). The structure of the description includes elements such as dating by watermarks of paper, characteristics of the book block, handwriting, binding, ornamental features, a detailed list of works included in a book or of parts of one work, inscriptions and owner’s notes, information about preservation, bibliography of works dedicated to either the study of the described handwritten book, or the works included in it. Thanks to the compiler’s consistent use of modern methods of archaeographic description, the information presented in the catalogue is extremely informative. Thus, taking all the watermarks of a manuscript into account helps to correct its research dating in some cases. A distinctive feature of the catalogue is its thorough research component: the catalogue contains a lot of specific archaeographic and bibliological information identified during the work on it, which will be useful to manuscript researchers. Some of these results are reflected in the scientific publications of T.V. Anisimova. The catalogue by itself accumulates current results of the collection’s manuscripts studies by a wide range of specialists. The catalogue not only testifies to the high professional level of its creator, but clearly demonstrates the wide capabilities and methods of modern archaeography in determining the composition, origin and existence of manuscripts.