Like reading the telephone book; also, who was (dying or) reading what and when.

Read until the end!

It's not like I'll spend hours doing this, but it is somewhat fun to look over historical lists of names.

[1] For example, see the following from the ספר גל אבנים כולל המצבות בעיר טריאסטי by Aaron Luzzatto, 1851.



[2] The sixth name from the top appears to be "Hymie Heiman Ha-kohen," which is a great name indeed. Unfortunately Hymie was only a young girl, a sobering thing one takes notice of in cemeteries.



[3] Another fertile field are subscription lists in books. For example, the 1866-7 edition of the Karaite commentary the Keter Torah by Aharon ben Aliyahu contains a subscription list with some interesting names and titles (anyone want to take a crack at what הזוג"פ stands for?).



[4] Here you can see some of the subscribers to Iggerot Shadal.





As you can see, the Chief Rabbi at London is on this list, as is R. Azriel Hildesheimer, and other notables. No, R. S.R. Hirsch did not pre-subscribe to a copy (although a letter to him is in the second volume).

[5] From the subscription list of another Samuel David Luzzatto book, his 1836 Prolegomeni ad una grammatica ragionata della lingua ebraica:



The surname "Sacerdote" means הכהן; it's like Italian "Kagan" (which is like Russian "Sacerdote," I guess.)

[6] Here you've got another kind of list, a useful one, actually. This is a list of translators of the haphtaros included in the Etz Chaim edition (Sulzbach 1845) of Mendelssohn's Nesivos Shalom Chumash with Bi'ur:



[7] And here's the list of subscribers from Poland, Lithuania and Russia to Mendelssohn's Or Le-nesivah, the introduction ("Light for the Path") to the Chumash, Nesivos Shalom ("Paths of Peace") printed in 1783:



By contrast, not much action in Paris or London (although one assumes that R' Mendel Hamburg in London felt he could sell or give away those 11 extra copies he subscribed for) :



Another detail from the same list:



It's great how you'll see someone listed as R' Wolf. You know, from Hildesheim. Not even "R' Wolf Hildesheim" or "Hildesheimer," just "R' Wolf." Or look at Fürth. Everyone must know who R' Ya'akov is in Fürth! There's only one Elchanan. And so forth.

[8] David Levi, the learned London hatmaker's 3-volume Lingua Sacra:




[9] If there is such a thing as a Haskalah manifesto, it is Yitzchak Ber Levinsohn's Teudah Be-yisrael. Here is the name of the Rashash (Rabbi Shmuel Strashun) as a subscriber to the first 1828 edition:




In this same volume you've got what was to me at first, a mysterious ר' אלי' הירש סאלעווייציק. I wasn't thinking he was the Beis Halevi's uncle, but I also wasn't thinking he wasn't. Not being a Soloveitchikian genealogist, I immediately saw that Google did not laugh when I typed in "tzvi soloveitchik". Indeed, "Eliyahu Tzvi Soloveitchik" popped up as a definite combination which seems to have survived to the present. When I removed the "t" I hit gold, and saw that he was a grandson of R. Chaim Volozhiner, and is indeed the Beis Halevi's uncle. Marc Shapiro posted about him here, and he also included a photograph of him (which I borrowed from Avakesh.