Tatiana Pashkova – Candidate of Sciences in History, Associate Professor, History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. E-mail: tatianapashkova22@gmail.com

Ekaterina Kameneva – The third-year student, History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. E-mail: kameneva.katya777@gmail.com

Egor Karasev – The third-year student, History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. E-mail: karasev. e. a.2ip@gmail.com

Nikita Kutsevalov – The third-year student, History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. E-mail: rainnick0@gmail.com

Darya Russkova – The third-year student, History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. E-mail: dascha.loli@yandex.ru

Address: 48 Reki Mojki Naberezhnaya, 191186, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

The article is devoted to the study of the prerequisites and historical context of the emergence of a special type of official documentation of the Ministry of Public Education of the Russian Empire — catalogues of textbooks for secondary schools. The lists of study guides and manuals approved by the Ministry have become an important control instrument of the teaching of school subjects. Their content and structure were drawn up gradually from about the 1830s. An important stage in the process of reviewing and cataloging textbooks has been reached in 1865, when the first complete catalogue appeared, based on new rules.