A Dark Mirror: Romanov and Imperial Palace Library Materials in the Holdings of The New York Public Library

In the years following the Russian Revolution, the Soviet government confiscated a significant portion of the personal wealth and palace property of the Romanov dynasty. During the 1920s and 1930s, much of that confiscated wealth and property was sold off by a government motivated by both ideology and financial need. The New York Public Library was one of the few institutional buyers of the nationalized books and manuscripts from Russian Imperial collections. A Dark Mirror catalogues and indexes for the first time more than 600 titles from the Library's collections that have an incontrovertible Imperial provenance. In addition, the introductory essay describes the fascinating story of how this material ended up in the West.