The 18th century library at Leufsta Manor in North Uppland has belonged to Uppsala University Library since 1986. The collections at the Leufsta Library were made by three generations of the De Geer family and consist of a number of different subjects, predominantly scientific.
Leufsta Manor library. Photo: Lars-Owe Wennman, 2009.
The eminent entomologist, also a devoted book collector, Charles De Geer (1720-1778) is seen as the real founder of the library. His great grandfather was Louis De Geer, a man of finance and industry from Liège, who is known as the father of Swedish industry.
Charles De Geer was born in Sweden but at age three he moved with his family to the Netherlands where he spent his childhood and early youth.
De Geer's book collecting started early in his home town of Utrecht which abounded with bookshops and publishers. He also made visits to Amsterdam, the Hague and Leiden, all of which were of great importance for the European book trade of the time. He learnt to use book catalogues and one of Holland's leading scientists, the physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek, was his teacher. Musschenbroek inspired De Geer to study the sciences.
Journals like Gazette der Leyden and Leidse Courant were De Geer's the most important source of information. By reading the advertisements he learnt about newly published literature and forthcoming book auctions whose catalogues were published in the journals. De Geer continued subscribing to these after moving to Leufsta in 1738-39. Other important sources of information for him were the Journal des savants and Philosophical transactions, which are considered to be two of the first modern scholarly journals.
Having got to know Olof Rudbeck the Younger, De Geer had the opportunity, over and above the two published volumes of Campus Elysii, of acquiring the big hand-drawn and hand-coloured illustrated works Blomboken [The Flower Book] and Fogelboken [The Bird Book]. Carl Linnaeus is believed to have said about the Fogelboken that "it appears not to be the work of a human hand".
At the auction following the death of Rudbeck the Younger, De Geer added Rudbeck's book of sketches Iter Lapponicum - Journey to Lappland - to his collection. On the same occasion he also purchased Basilius Besler's Hortus Eystettensis printed in Nürnberg in 1613. This work consists of two volumes, one of which is coloured. He also bought four manuscripts written by the young Linnaeus including Catalogus plantarum rariorum Scaniae dated 1728 and Adonis sive Hortus Uplandicus dated 1731. In the latter Linnaeus classifies plants in Uppsala's botanical gardens according to his new sexual system.
De Geer himself corresponded with Carl Linnaeus and 18 letters from De Geer to Linnaeus have survived. There are no extant letters in the other direction but since De Geer routinely started his letters with a repetition of the subject of discussion, the reader is able to gather the gist of the content in the letters from Linnaeus.
There was also correspondence between De Geer and his role model in entomology, the French scientist René Antoine Réaumur, from whose work De Geer borrowed the title for his own publication on insect research - Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insectes in 7 volumes published between 1752-1778.
In addition to entomology, general zoology and botany, there is also ichthyology, the study of fish, in Charles De Geer's book collection. One splendid example is Louis Renard's beautiful book with hand-coloured plates from 1754 about the fish and crustaceans in the sea surrounding the Islands of the Moluccas.
The acquisition by Uppsala University Library of the approximately 8,500 books was made possible by public grants and two large private donations. For reasons of security the most valuable works are kept in Uppsala University Library. The book collection is listed in a catalogue compiled by E.G. Lilljebjörn. There are copies of this catalogue, with the University Library's spine labels, in the Special Reading Room and in the catalogue room at Carolina Rediviva.
Further reading
- Anfält, Tomas. "Buying books by mail order: a Swedish customer and Dutch booksellers in the eighteenth century". In The bookshop of the world : the role of the Low Countries in the book-trade, 1473-1941. London, 1999. Pp 263-276.
