RaRa's historic French collections feature works spanning almost 300 years, from the oldest book dated 1584 to 1900. The majority found their way into the library in the 20th century.

Some came from the libraries of noble families, where it was common to know French, even royals such as Tsar Alexander I, prominent Baltic-German families, and Estonian bibliophiles, such as lawyer Viktor Johanson. Others were donated by the French Embassy or purchased by the library when it expanded its foreign literature collections.

While the Baltic-German collections have already been thoroughly studied by researchers, until now, the French collections have not.

Turner, a specialist in French early modern literature and ideas (17th and 18th centuries) and former researcher and lecturer at the UK's Oxford University, became interested in the French collections after moving to Estonia several years ago. Lacking an expert in this area, the library agreed to collaborate. 

Over the past year, Turner worked with RaRa's digital catalogs, which contain thousands of books, manuscripts, and engravings, alongside the head of the Humanities Division Katre Riisalu, Paula Põder, and rare books specialist Ruth Hiie to produce a report outlining the collection's contents. 

Turner said she was surprised by what she found. Some of the works are incredibly valuable or rare and some do not exist in the French archives in western Europe. These include banned books, those sold on the black market, and works of the 17th-century artist Jacques Callot.

"It leads to questions about the journey of these books to Estonia and the circulation of ideas across Europe but also who was reading these books, how and for what purposes," she said.

There are several ways a work's "Frenchness" can be defined and Turner said it is quite a "loose term." This includes publishing a book in France in French or in a different language, or in French abroad, alternatively, it could have a French publisher but the subject matter may not be connected to France at all.

One of her tasks was to highlight culturally important objects, which is a complicated task, the researcher said. This includes taking into account the book's rarity, the status of the writer but also that of the publisher, the book's reception, ownership, and value.

"And there is the issue of grappling with an outdated [literary] canon, centuries in the making," Turner said. "So when you think of something that's important, what are you using as your framework of reference? Who decided it was important and why? And what did they exclude in the process?"  

For example, some books may have been very popular at the time of print, but have now fallen into obscurity. In some cases, a writer's social status meant their work may have been excluded from the canon. 

"So you need to go back and reassess the book's importance in its specific and also wider context. You also have to be aware of your own position and how your expectations might influence your selection process," Turner said.

Working with writers who have fallen into obscurity comes with additional responsibility, the researcher said. Some are deserving of further study, but not all.

"At times [it felt] as though I was delving into something private and personal, from the history of the period. It wasn't just about important books and ideas but about the stories of the lives of those behind the book," she said.

The second stage of the project includes unpacking the books – currently in storage due to RaRa's ongoing renovation – and studying the physical copies. Turner said this will be "very exciting".

"It's not the same when they are digitalized. You don't understand the history involved, the printing process, the artwork, the craftmanship. It's not only in the bookbinding but in the fabrication of the paper. And some of these prints are really beautiful," the researcher said. She also tries to emphasize this to her students at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA).

This process will reveal new information because, while the books are described in the catalog, it's only by seeing the covers, pages, and text that it is possible to understand their significance.

One example is a rare early edition of The Crimes of Love (Les Crimes de l'amour) from 1800 by the writer and philosopher the Marquis de Sade which features an unidentified coat of arms. Another problem is "false imprints" when books are deliberately published with the wrong information to combat censorship.

"So the address is wrong, the date is wrong, or maybe it has been omitted," Turner said, speaking about two books in the collection, one by writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the other by the philosopher Denis Diderot.

Turner is now looking at the French collections at the University of Tartu and planning an exhibition based on this research. She said there are strong connections with France that could be further explored.

"In the First Republic, there was a real interest in French culture," she said. This is when the Tallinn French School (Tallinna Prantsuse Lütseum) was founded and theaters performed French plays, something Turner plans to take a deeper look at.

Speaking about her experiences working with RaRa, she said it was exciting to study the unknown. 

"I didn't know what I was going to find," she said. "For days I could be looking through hundreds of books and nothing too surprising would come up. Sometimes it's the things that you don't think are important, [but] they actually are. And then you get an adrenaline rush when you come across something that is unusual, rare, or valuable and that cannot be found elsewhere".

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