Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - March - 2003 Issue
April Catalogue Review Book Collecting: Seeking a Southern Exposure
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Once in a while a dealer has enough material, spanning the five centuries since Columbus planted the Spanish flag in the new world, to issue a catalogue in date order that conveys the march of history. The Breitfelds do this and do it very well. For those of us in the northern half it is easy to ignore the extraordinary history just to the south. It was in fact South America that was discovered and explored first. When Ponce de Leon came ashore in Florida in 1513 to lay claim to what turned out to be North America he was looking for the fountain of youth. Discovery and development to the south was already under way while the first permanent settlement in North America would not be made until 1565 at St. Augustine. Even then Florida would remain a penciled note on the larger canvas that centered on the gold and silver deposits well to the south.
Those who collect Americana may stop at the water’s edge, never venture south, never cross the language barriers to Latin, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian, but in limiting their pursuit of the earliest materials to those in English they simply wipe the first 60 years of development of the new world off their literary map. The first obtainable (and only with patience and money) item in English is Richard Eden’s The Decades of the New World printed in 1554. If you really want to connect to the entire history of the new world you will want to inhabit the world that Alfredo & Gustavo Breitfeld bring to life in their newest catalogue. Of course, they are going to going to try to keep you south of the border. They want you to think of Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador and Brazil the way Edward Eberstadt thought about Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado and California 80 years ago. In Eberstadt’s time the Americana relating to the western states was the undiscovered frontier of book collecting. Alfredo & Gustavo want you to think that way about the nations to the south.
