India Office Library. Commonwealth Relations Office. Catalogue of European Printed Books. [ Complete set, 10 volumes ]

G. K. Hall & Co, Boston, 1964 reprint. 10 vols, cloth, folio 358 x 260 mm,. pp. About 90,000 entries. A massive catalogue of the printed books in European languages in the India Office Library, including many rarities and very comprehensive coverage of material on the British Raj. The European Printed Books collection was originally part of the library set up by the Honourable East India Company in 1801 to safeguard books entrusted to it by its servants and others. The Company's Directors soon began to collect actively rather than just receiving material, and from the outset made their stock available to orientalist scholars as well as maintaining and augmenting it as an official reference resource. After the demise of the Company in 1858 its responsibilities were taken over by the newly-established India Office, and coverage started to concentrate on material relating to the Indian sub-continent and its affairs, together with those of Burma. The European Printed Books collection holds a considerable amount of extremely rare Indian and UK material and is the primary repository for material on the history of British India. Contents : Vols 1-2: Sheaf catalogue, A-Z. Vols 3 - 6: Author catalogue, A-Z. Vols 7 - 9 : Subject catalogue, A-Z. Vol 10: Catalogue of periodicals. (Accessions until 1936 were included in an Author catalogue in sheaf form, in which entries from twenty-two volumes of uncumulated printed catalogues and printed supplementary accessions lists were pasted in a single alphabetical sequence. In 1936 the cataloguing system was reorganised; all subsequent accessions were entered in two card catalogues, one Author, the other Subject. The present work accordingly reproduces (a) the whole of the Author sheaf catalogue containing accessions to 1936 (in Volumes 1 and 2), and (b) (in Volumes 3-9) the Author and Subject card catalogues containing accessions from 1936 to the end of 1963, (together with some recatalogued pre-1936 accessions) and (c) periodical publications as a separate sequence at the end of the Author card catalogue (Volume 10).) A Very Good ex-library set. The library markings are :stamps on top and bottom edges, small spine labels, and partly removed labels from the front free endpapers. Otherwise Very Good, some covers a little scuffed.