Overnight the Great War has changed many a wrong notion. “Time changes all, and by time is truth to victory guided; what in their errors the years planned, in a day is o’erthrown,” prophetically sings John Kollár, the great Slovak poet. Following the example of the French, several English and American writers, Henry Wickham Steed, R. W. Seton-Watson and Will S. Monroe among them, have in recent years paid visits to Bohemia, and the result is both surprising and gratifying. It is certain that, once aroused, Anglo-Saxon curiosity will not abate until it has learned all about Bohemia, even though the knowledge obtained may disagree with the Alice in Wonderland tales that have been related in Vienna to the old time British and American travelers.
A new development in the study of Bohemia and her people by foreigners may be said to date from the time the dual system of government was introduced (1867). Until then the interest of scholars was confined wholly to historic and sectarian questions; from that time on, political and ethnological issues began to engage their serious attention.
The present bibliography lists, besides books and pamphlets, magazine articles only; it does not pretend to register items appearing in the weekly, much less in the daily press. To attempt the latter would be beyond the scope and purpose of the catalogue. Exceptions to the rule have been made in favor of articles bearing the signature of authors who are known to be especially qualified to discuss the subjects selected by them.
Scarcely a book has been written on Austria or the Slavs which does not, directly or indirectly, discuss Bohemia and the Čechs. The catalogue cannot take cognizance of such publications, although, in this respect also, the rule has been relaxed and books have been indexed, dealing broadly with Austria and the Slavs. Colquhoun’s The Whirlpool of Europe: Austria-Hungary and the Hapsburgs, Steed’s The Hapsburg Monarchy and Seton-Watson’s German, Slav, and Magyar may be cited as typical examples of these publications.
Quite correctly the spelling of proper names, though obsolescent, has been left undisturbed. The Bohemians spell Hus, not Huss; Žižka, not Zisca. Comenius is a Latinized form dating back to an age when it was the custom to Latinize one’s surname; the real name is Komenský and Bohemian history knows the educator by this name only.
The authors have availed themselves of the skilled services of Leonard C. Wharton, who was asked to look into the rare Bohemica preserved in the British Museum. Mr. Wharton performed this part of the work with painstaking care.
Many of the seventeenth century items have been extracted from the British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books. The Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum has yielded The Historie of Bohemia, written presumably in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Items of minor value were obtained from the State Papers of John Thurloe; the Harleian Miscellany, or a collection of scarce, curious and entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts; Robert Watts’ Bibliotheca Britannica, or a General Index to British and Foreign Literature. For numerous current items the authors are indebted to Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature and the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature.
The reader will probably agree with the present authors that but for Bohemia’s Protestant past, Anglo-American Bohemica would be practically non-existent. Strip the source book of Hus, of the events which followed the Reformation and the anti-Reformation, of the United Brethren and their alleged offspring, the Moravians, of Komenský, and Bohemia would stand before the Anglo-American world like Cinderella from the fairy tale—unwritten about, still waiting to be discovered.
The bibliography proper is subdivided into twenty-two parts, a brief and relevant comment accompanying each part. The respective sub-titles are: Art, Bibliography, Biography, Bohemian Glass, Dictionaries, Drama, Fiction, Folk and Fairy Tales, Guides, History, John Hus, John Amos Komenský, Language and Literature, Miscellany, Music, Periodicals, Plans and Maps, Politics, Prague, Sociology and Economics, Sokols, Travel and Description. A separate chapter, entitled Bohemia in the British State Papers and Manuscripts, contains bibliographical extracts from the Calendar of State Papers, the Reports of the British Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Papal Registers, etc.
The especial acknowledgments of the authors are due to Prof. Will S. Monroe, author of Bohemia and the Čechs, and to Mr. Leonard C. Wharton of London. Prof. Monroe kindly read and compared with his own, the bibliography on Komenský. The material which Mr. Wharton has sent from England emphasizes anew the enthusiastic interest he takes in the language, history and literature of the Bohemian people.