“Three Centuries” completes the famous series prepared by Sytin & Co for the anniversary of the House of Romanov. The six-volume book was published in true Sytin’s style: expensive paper and beautiful illustrations. The front cover features a drawing in the technique of bas-relief embossing. It depicts the Monomakh’s Cap, scepter and orb, while the font is made using deep gold embossing. The publication is adorned with many illustrations given in the text and on separate sheets: reproductions of paintings by Russian artists, portraits of historical figures, maps and diagrams. The editorial team was replete with the most celebrated Russian scientists of that time, among the compilers of analytical reviews were authoritative historians, economists, and philologists like Sergey Platonov, Yury Gauthier, Nikolay Brodsky, Alexander Veselovsky and others.

However, it was difficult to impress the Russian public with rich designs and big names at that time: many luxurious folios appeared to celebrate the tercentenary of the House of Romanov. If Sytin’s edition differed in some way from the others, it was primarily in its tone and mood. The topics of the articles were very diverse — from Nikon’s reforms to the political acts of Nicholas I and zemstvo institutions; they all convinced the reader that Russia did not know any other times than the troubled ones, but sooner or later the troubles would end and a new era would begin.

The annotation reads as follows,

The editor who compiled this collective work was the literary critic, folklorist and bibliographer Vladimir Vladimirovich Kallash (1866–1918), a graduate of the Department of History and Philology of Moscow University. His main interests included researching the history of creation of the works of 19^th-century Russian writers, textual studies and bibliography.