Meanwhile, the Library saw rapid expansion as gifts and legacies arrived from private individuals, for instance the collections of Małachowski, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Karol Kniaziewicz and Adam Mickiewicz.

[2] Towards the end of the 19th century, the activities of the Literary Society had declined, and the maintenance of the library in Paris was transferred in 1893 to the responsibility of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Kraków.

In the following period, a number of valuable books, manuscripts and artworks which the library could not properly maintain were sent to museums and institutions in the now independent Poland.

On the eve of World War II there were 145,000 books, 1,000 manuscripts, 12,000 images, 2,800 atlases and maps and 20,000 copies of documents relating to Polish history drawn from British and French archives.

[4] Most of the looted materials were returned from Germany by 1947, however, the Library faced bitter legal battles with the post-war Communist Polish government over ownership.

The chairman of the association, or governing council of the Library, is elected for a term of 5 years and is currently C. Pierre Zaleski, from the Polish Academy of Learning.

[9] This body groups all recognised collections outside Poland, but it does not cover items held in foreign institutions, nor the many thousands of objects as yet unrecovered from war-time looting and displacement.

[11] This bodes ill for other such centres which may be obliged either to be scattered or receive more fragile materials, as has already disastrously happened in the case of the decimated Polish Museum at Fawley Court, England.