Chronicles for a history of editing and reading in the 19th century. The Biblioteca Americana of Alejandro Magariños Cervantes

Abstract

The American Library was a collection that, in the words of Alejandro Magariños Cervantes, was intended to disseminate unpublished materials by the most notable American authors. Although this project began in Paris in 1854, the following volumes would be published in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, between 1858 and 1864. It is interesting to note that in each book, the editor included some pages that he called “Chronicle of the Library”, where he presented his ideas about the general plan of this work, written correspondence, critical judgments, lists of subscribers, distribution circuits and places of commercialization. He also mentioned difficulties with printing, both due to the delays of authors delivering the works and to production issues due to lack of paper. Additional problems were the high costs and the few material gains obtained by this company. The purpose of this article is to study those chronicles in order to reconstruct the future of the catalog, comparing the authors and the works that Alejandro Magariños Cervantes announces will be published with the definitive content of the collection. At the same time, this article aims to track indications of practices and uses associated with book production in the mid-19th century.