Three years, 1843 – 1845
"Three years" – an album of Taras Shevchenko's verses. It contains a clean copy of all his rhymes, written in the 2nd half of 1843 – 1845. After the name of the collection that period in the life and work of Shevchenko called the period of "Three years".
During April – June 1846, while staying in Kiev, Shevchenko rewrote his poetry to some notebooks that were later framed as an album. So poem "Heretic", contained in the seventh notebook, found itself at the end of the album, and the end of the poem "The great cellar" – between verses "The days are passing and the nights…" and "To the dead and the living…" In February – March 1847, while staying in Sedniv, he made a small correction in the texts.
April 5, 1847 during the arrest of Shevchenko this album was removed and it became in the eyes of police one of the chief evidence of "guilt" Shevchenko in front of the tsarist government. Gendarmes made their marks in album: underline certain words and lines, marks NB in the fields, drove vertical lines near most "seditious" places. The album was included in the investigation case Shevchenko within a case of Cyril and Methodius society, and up to 1906 it was kept in the secret archive of the 3rd department.
In 1906, after another russian revolution investigation files were declassified and in the journal "New Community" saw the first publication of Shevchenko from this album.
In 1907 the album has been transferred to the Museum of Ukrainian antiquities in Chernihiv, it is now kept at the Institute of Literature (Department of Manuscripts. Fund 1 (Shevchenko), № 88).
In 1966 was made a facsimile reprint of the album (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1966 – 240 p.); our scans made with this reissue, not the original.