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In the end of his address to Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association in 1933 titled "The marquis and the land agent: a tale of the 18th century", the Association president G. N. Watson says:

My final task is to express my gratitude to Prof. Neville for having made the extremelly happy suggestion of an exhibition of books on elliptic functions...

and the editor adds:

The exhibition consisted of 97 volumes, and included all but very few existing books on elliptic functions....Before the collection is dispersed, the most careful bibliographical record will be compiled, and it is hoped that this list will become of permanent value to librarians and scholars.

My source: Math. Gazette 17 (1933) 5-17. The opening page of this issue explains the circumstances under which the exhibition was held:

The Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association was held at the Institute of Education on 5th-6th January, 1933. . . . A Publishers' Exhibition was open during the two days.

My question: Is there any way to find this list (if it was ever published)?

I searched for publications in this journal with title words "books", "elliptic" but had no success. (Watson's talk is about the founders of the theory, Fagnano and Landen). The following issue (May 1933) of this journal contains reprints of most of the talks that were given during the Annual Meeting, but it does not contain the list of books at the Exhibition.

Remark. Zentralblatt finds only 15 books with "Elliptische Funktionen" in the title published in 1850-1933, and 4 books with Elliptische Integrale.

Alexandre Eremenko
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    Presumably "the Mathematical Association" is (was) an organization in England. It it still exists, that may be a place to look for this list. – Gerald Edgar Mar 22 '20 at 13:40
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    I removed the tag "number theory" added by someone because before 1933 "elliptic functions" were not a part of number theory, but rather of "applied mathematics". The related subject in number theory is usually called "elliptic curves". – Alexandre Eremenko Mar 22 '20 at 13:43
  • Is this the same as London Mathematical Society? Then maybe you can write them an email – Mauricio Sep 01 '21 at 16:12
  • @Mauricio No. It is https://www.m-a.org.uk/ , the association that publishes (or published) the Mathematical Gazette. (See https://www.jstor.org/journal/mathgaze ) But of course your suggestion is still valid. – kimchi lover Sep 01 '21 at 16:39
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    I would try to locate the surviving personal papers of E. H. Neville. An obvious place to look is at the University of Reading Library, which has is collection of books (https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/collections/neville-collection/) . I would also look at the MA collection https://www.m-a.org.uk/m-a-library. In each case you would need to contact an archivist or librarian on the spot. – kimchi lover Sep 01 '21 at 16:58
  • Further confirmation of the exhibition, without further details: "Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association", Nature 131, 67–68 (1933): [...] In connexion with his address an unusually complete exhibition of books on elliptic functions, arranged chronologically, had been compiled by Prof. Neville [...] – njuffa Sep 03 '21 at 22:40
  • I checked the numerous items published by E.H. Neville in the Mathematical Gazette during 1930-1939 (http://www.wpr3.co.uk/gazette/1930-39.html), and the only potential match I could find is this: E.H. Neville, "A bibliographical note", Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 17, No. 224, July 1933, pp. 200-201. – njuffa Sep 03 '21 at 22:58
  • I managed to find the initial portion of Neville's 1933 bibliographical note online (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mathematical-gazette/article/abs/1076-a-bibliographical-note/EFB9ED997C2FBFCAE62CB49BD00DABE0) and it deals with some publications by A.M. Legendre, so is not relevant. – njuffa Sep 03 '21 at 23:16
  • @njuffa: I have access to the full text of this note, and there is nothing in it except these 2 books of Legendre. So this is not the beginning of the list of these 97 volumes. – Alexandre Eremenko Sep 04 '21 at 01:04
  • @njuffa: I tried electronic search in this journal but with no success. Their search engine is really lousy. – Alexandre Eremenko Sep 04 '21 at 01:14
  • @AlexandreEremenko At this point I am quite convinced that the announced list of books was never published. Neither in the Mathematical Gazette nor elsewhere. So the suggestion by kimchi lover to search in relevant archives seems like the best bet at this point. – njuffa Sep 04 '21 at 01:22
  • @njuffa: Thanks for your efforts. I was just impressed by the number of books in this report, and was curious to see the authors and titles. It is pity that it it unpublished, but I do not think that archive search is worth the effort. – Alexandre Eremenko Sep 04 '21 at 12:13

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