Illegal editions

History of the collection: The collection has come into being over the years.
Size: The collection amounts to c.650 volumes.
Access: The books can be found in the OPAC and (partly) in the card catalogues of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The may be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room.
More information:
Paul van Capelleveen 070-3140331
Jan Bos 070-3140665

Description of the collection

Between 1940 and 1945 some 1000 illegal publications appeared. They have been accurately described by Dirk de Jong in his standard work Het vrije boek in onvrije tijd (Leiden 1958). The books are mainly belletristic in character, but there are also politically engaged works among them. They are further characterized by the use of good paper, illustrations, appealing texts from home and abroad and from the past and present. Because of the restrictions imposed on publishing by the Nazis the major part of the books were published in limited editions and under difficult circumstances.
The Koninklijke Bibliotheek aims at a representative if not complete collection of these works. Some 650 of the 1,019 titles in De Jong are now in the collection. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in 1995, an exhibition of illegal editions was organized with special reference to the beautiful prints by the Groningen artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman.

Literature

Marieke van Delft, Reinder Storm en Kees Thomassen. Het verborgen woord : drukken van Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman en andere clandestiene publicaties uit de collectie ... Den Haag : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1995, 48 p. (Tentoonstellingscatalogi en -brochures van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek ; no 51)