We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large
selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and
VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors
LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. We do
not see evidence for gravitational wave emission from any of the targeted
sources but produce upper limits on the emission amplitude. We highlight the
results from seven young pulsars with large spin-down luminosities. We reach
within a factor of five of the canonical spin-down limit for all seven of
these, whilst for the Crab and Vela pulsars we further surpass their spin-down
limits. We present new or updated limits for 172 other pulsars (including both
young and millisecond pulsars). Now that the detectors are undergoing major
upgrades, and, for completeness, we bring together all of the most up-to-date
results from all pulsars searched for during the operations of the
first-generation LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 detectors. This gives a total of 195
pulsars including the most recent results described in this paper.
