The paper aims to give the results of initial research on the collection of incunabula from the St John’s church in Gdańsk. The collection constitutes significant part of PAN Biblioteka Gdańska. The author reconstructed the size and contents of the collection on the basis of the original church catalogues, marks of ownership and the physical details of the items. The books were gathered in the St John’s church from the time of the collections foundation until the 20th century. The paper establishes also the losses sustained by St John’s church’s library during World War II. Thanks to the incunabula’s content analysis the author determines the thematic focal points of the collection.

The paper aims to give a comprehensive account of books by Polish authors published in B. Z. Milski’s publishing house in Gdańsk in the 1890s. Bernard Zygmunt Milski was the founder and editor of “Gazeta Gdańska”. The author discussed Polish books published between 1891 and 1900. Milski deserves all of the credit for publishing “Krzyżacy” by Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1900. From among various periodicals and supplements published by Milski only the book calendars have been described in the article.

The purpose of the paper is to discuss the Zernecke family’s library curated by PAN Biblioteka Gdańska.
Walter Friedrich Heinrich Zernecke (1862–1925) bequeathed his book-collection (1321 volumes) and his family collection of souvenirs to the library. The author reconstructed the contents of the collection on the basis of marks of ownership that occur in the survived books. The collection consists mainly of books devoted to historical, heraldic and genealogical studies (by Jacob Heinrich, Daniel Andreas, Valentin Heinrich, Wilhelm Ferdinand and Walter Friedrich Heinrich). Zernecke’s manuscript collection contains materials written by prominent members of the Zernecke family (Jacob Heinrich, Heinrich and Daniel Andreas). The most valuable part of the collection is a group of iconographic materials including an oil painting (Heinrich Zernecke’s portait by J. Wessel), engravings and photographic portraits of the family members and their book plates.

The article discusses the features of 19th-century periodicals from Wilno (Vilnius). In the first part of the 19th century Wilno (Vilnius) became an important cultural centre which influenced the intellectual life of the rest of the region. The literary magazines which have survived in the library’s holdings („Dziennik Wileński”, „Gazetę Literacką Wileńską”, „Tygodnik Wileński”, „Wiadomości Brukowe”, „Wizerunki i Roztrząsania Naukowe”, „Znicz”, „Rusałka”, „Athenaeum”, „Rubon”, „Pamiętnik Naukowo-Literacki”) reflect the diversity of the intellectual life in Wilno. The author provided detailed information about the editors and their magazines focusing on the literary and cultural character of the periodicals. In 1851 the final issue of the „Athenaeum” (ed. By I. K. Krasicki) was published; the date has been interpreted as a turning point, after which no periodical was brought out in Wilno for the following six-year period.

The paper discusses the history of Clara Bernthal, a postcard publishing house from Gdańsk founded in 1898. The author provided information about the founder of the publishing house and the postcards on the basis on the archival materials. The text has been supplemented by a catalogue of Clara Bernthal postcards from Biblioteka Gdańska’s holdings. Collectors, museum registrars and librarians will find this information helpful in identifying publication dates of the postcards.

The eternal traveller, who was to become the founder of the Gdańsk Library, traversed Moravia several times and sojourned there at least twice. During his stay of 1562–1564, which was probably the longest, died his little dog named Viola, a reminiscency of his Apulian fatherland taken along in exile. Bonifacio wrote elegies after that death, in which he utters many names of persons of similar Weltanschauung he knew. Together with him mourned his favourite servant Julia: she was to be unable to stand the consequent void of the death and abandoned her master (and lover). So Bonifacio was hit by a double loss. He tried to overcome the depression in which he stayed: He succeeded with the animal, the dogs, who were to accompany him as far as to Gdańsk, but he failed with the women. He was to go his way without company, dedicating his leisure to the reading of his books (he possessed over 1000 volumes), but merging into depression. Blinded in a shipwreck, he bequeathed his books and the manuscript with the verses on Viola in 1591 to the city of Gdańsk; he died six years later.