The First Korean Books in <i>Hanmun</i> in Russia

The aim of this study was to establish the origin of Korean books from the so-called “Brosset Collection” kept at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Asiatic Museum). The “Brosset Collection” is a conventional name for the books which are mentioned in the handwritten catalogue of the Asiatic Museum’s Far Eastern collection compiled by Academician Marie-Félicité Brosset (1802–1880). This catalogue lists nine identifiable Korean texts, eight of which are written entirely or partially in <i>Hanmun</i>.1 Judging by the date of their cataloguing (1840 and 1842), they are most likely the first Korean books to appear in Russia and are among the earliest surviving Korean-printed books held in European scholarly institutions. The study includes analysis of the various archival documents and marginalia in the books themselves. As a result, it was proven that most of these books form a single collection that originally came from the library of Baron Paul Schilling (1786–1837), who probably received them from the sinologist Nikita Iakovlevich Bichurin (Archimandrite Hyacinth; 1777–1853), head of the Ninth Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing, and one book originated from the collection of Manchu studies scholar Stepan Vasil’evich Lipovtsov (1770–1841)