Shibanov

a family of Russian antiquarian booksellers.

Petr Vasil’evich Shibanov. Born circa 1822 in the village of Lava, in Karsun District, Simbirsk Province; died Dec. 22, 1892 (Jan. 3, 1893), in Moscow.

The son of a serf, P. V. Shibanov began selling Russian manuscripts and books in old Russian typeface (staropechatnye knigi) in 1840, while in Samara. He became commissioner of the Society of Lovers of Ancient Literature in 1877 and the proprietor of a bookstore in Moscow in 1883.

Pavel Petrovich Shibanov. Born 1864 in Samara; died May 1, 1935, in Moscow. Son of P. V. Shibanov.

P. P. Shibanov started out in his father’s business and acquired his own bookstore in 1892. The catalogs published by him— The Antiquarian Book Trade of P. Shibanov (nos. 1–168, 1885–1916) —are an invaluable source on the history of the Russian book in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1892, Shibanov published the journal Bibliograficheskie zapiski, of which 12 numbers appeared. After the October Revolution of 1917 his store became municipal property, and his collection of books and manuscripts was given to the library of the Rumiantsev Museum, now the Lenin State Library of the USSR.

In November 1918, Shibanov was retained as an expert for the People’s Commissariat for Education; he inventoried and oversaw the distribution of nationalized book collections. In 1923 he became head of the antiquarian department of the joint-stock company Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga, under the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade and the Supreme Council on the National Economy; the company carried on a trade in books in the USSR and abroad. Shibanov helped compile about 300 catalogs of old books.

Shibanov was a member of several bibliographic and bibliophilic societies and wrote on the history of the antiquarian book trade in Russia.