The National Museum of History preserves about 1300 books, brochures, albums, leaflets, posters, sheet music, scores, etc., published in the period after the Liberation and until 1944.
The majority of publications are in Bulgarian, but there are also some in French, German, English, Italian, Serbian, Czech and other languages. The collection is extremely varied and the exhibits are difficult to categorize, but we can nevertheless outline several groups present in it:
Official publications of the authorities – reports, regulations, normative acts, jubilee collections of the ministries of the Bulgarian principality/kingdom, stenographic diaries of the National Assembly, etc.
Military literature – publications of the Military Historical Commission at the Army Headquarters, as well as numerous Bulgarian and foreign publications reflecting Bulgaria’s participation in the Russo-Turkish Liberation, Serbo-Bulgarian, the two Balkan, the First and the Second World Wars.
Educational literature – textbooks, reading books and manuals used in the educational system of Bulgaria during the relevant period.
Scientific and popular literature, mainly on Bulgarian history, geography, culture, lifestyle, local studies, biographies of famous personalities, etc.
Fiction, children’s, encyclopaedic, etc. literature – distributed in relatively large circulation editions of Bulgarian and foreign authors with different themes.
The collection also contains books from the personal libraries of Elizaveta Bagriana, Hristo Vakarelski, Gen. Nikiforov Nikiforov, Valko Chervenkov and others.
There are also valuable and rare editions such as the book “Memoir of the Holy Anointing of H.H. Prince Boris of Tarnovo, February 2, 1896”, printed by the prominent book publisher Hristo Bachvarov, the founder of the first Bulgarian paper factory in Belovo. The book, published in 1896, describes the work carried out in the Church of St. It is a luxurious edition for its time and today is an exceptional bibliographical rarity.
