Essays in Librarianship and BibliographyGarnett, Richard
Science
Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography
Garnett, Richard
Bibliography -- Methodology; British Museum; Library science
Four out of these seven books are in the British Museum—the Vocabulario
and Arte of Ruiz de Montoya, Yapuguai's Catechism, and the letter of
Antequera y Castro. The first two were presented in 1818 by Mr. George
Bellas Greenough, the founder of the Geological Society. The Catechism
was purchased in 1889, and the letter in 1893. The latter is the only
copy hitherto known, and is the only one of the seven books of which
some portion is not facsimiled by Señor Medina.
Printing had died out in Paraguay before its introduction into any other
portion of the great La Plata region. It revived under Jesuit auspices
at Cordova, where towards the end of the seventeenth century a college
had been founded by Duarte y Quiros, which had become the chief
educational institution of the country. By 1765 it had attained
sufficient consequence to become sensible of the inconvenience of being
unable to print its theses and other academical documents, which, so
wretched was the provision then made for the intellectual needs of the
Spanish colonies, could only be done at Lima, more than a thousand miles
off on the other side of the Andes. The Viceroy of Peru was accordingly
appealed to, and permission obtained, fenced with all imaginable
precautions and restrictions. No time was lost in printing five
panegyrical orations upon the pious founder Duarte y Quiros, probably by
Father Peramas, which appeared in 1766. Two, or possibly three, minor
publications, now entirely lost, had followed, when the existence of the
press was abruptly terminated by the suppression of the Jesuits, and
Cordova never saw another until after the independence. The types,
however, not tin like the Paraguayan, but imported from Spain and cast
_secundum artem_, were preserved in the college, and in 1780 were
transferred to Buenos Ayres, where it had been resolved to introduce
typography; not for its own sake, but as a means of raising money
towards the support of a foundling hospital, endowed with the proceeds
of the printing-press. Official and ecclesiastical patronage were not
wanting; by the end of 1781 twenty-seven publications of various
descriptions, mostly of course on a very small scale, had issued from
the Buenos Ayres press. The first of any kind was a proclamation
relating to the militia, facsimiled by Señor Medina; the first deserving
the character of a book was, as in British North America, an almanac.
The most interesting from their subject were pastoral letters by two
bishops on the overthrow of the rebel cacique Tupac Amaru in Peru. The
press continued to thrive, and in 1789 it was necessary to procure a
new fount of type from Spain. The total number of publications known to
the end of 1810 is 851—a very large proportion of which, however, are
merely fly-sheets. Some, nevertheless, are of exceptional interest, such
as the translation of Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life," perhaps the
first translation of an English book ever published in Spanish America,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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