First edition of a rare 18th-century catalogue of the library of Haarlem, the Netherlands. The present copy comes from the celebrated Haarlemiana collection of A. M. van den Broek (1932-1995). It lists all the books present in the library in 1716. The work also includes a poem by Salomon van Echten (1643-1728), which was written specifically for the Haarlem library in 1673 and hung there for many years. A second edition of the catalogue, titled Catalogus librorum bibliothecae Harleminae novus, was printed by Johannes Enschedé in 1768, but the first edition is more scarce.
The city library, or librije, of Haarlem was established in 1596, when the Prince of Orange gifted the collections of former convent libraries to the city as compensation for the damage after the siege of Haarlem (1572-73). The city library was primarily accessible for scholars and had an especially large collection of theology works. In the 19th century, the collection grew exponentially from just a few hundred works to over 45.000, with a large focus on book and printing history. The old collection is currently part of het Noord-Hollands Archief. The librije itself has been renamed to bibliotheek Zuid-Kennemerland and is now a public library.
The works in the catalogue are arranged by topic and further divided by size. The first chapter lists the works on theology in folio format, then quarto and octavo. The other topics are law, medicine, philosophy and other humanities, cosmo-, geo- and topography, works from classical antiquity, history, and even manuscript written on parchment. The catalogue is a unique source for Dutch 18th-century book history and the history of this library in particular.
With a shelfmark label ("16") mounted on the head of the spine and annotations about the provenance from Mr. A. M. van den Broek (the previous owner) mounted on the front pastedown. The gold-tooling on the boards is very slightly rubbed. The edges of the endpapers have browned from the leather, the first few leaves are slightly dust-soiled and frayed and pp. 1-2 show a very small hole in the fore-edge margin of the leaf, all without affecting the text, the leaves are slightly warped from past humidity, mild foxing throughout. Overall in very good condition. Ekema, Catalogus over de geschiedenis van Haarlem, 262 and 383; STCN 153931361 (8 copies); cf. for the binding: Storm van Leeuwen vol. 1, pp. 410-436.