In this book an effort is made to present – as far as is now possible – the language spoken by Lutsk Karaims in the second half of the 19th and in the first two decades of the 20th centuries. This is attempted by means of editing 16 letters written in Lutsk Karaim – with Hebrew interpolations. The manuscripts were written by different authors in Hebrew script.

Our edition is supplied with several other chapters and indexes. From the introductory part, the reader will obtain an overall picture of the history of manuscripts (Part I). The chapter devoted to the linguistic description of the manuscripts (Part II) aims to present a short grammar of the manuscripts’ language. It is complemented with a longer subchapter dealing with the Slavonic structural influences exerted on the authors’ idiolects, and with the lexicon of the texts. A separate chapter (Part III) deals with the orthography and the features of the writing itself. The transcription and translation of each manuscript (Part IV) are preceded with a concise palaeographic description and a summary of the content. Finally, the glossary, several indexes, maps, and the facsimile serve the purpose of facilitating the use of the edition (Parts V–IX).