• Cayetano Lanuza, Jicotencal's Author
• María Helena Barrera-Agarwal (bio)

Jicotencal, Lanuza, Mendía & Co., Cayetano Lanuza, Joseph Mendía, Frederick Huttner, William Stavely, Pierre-Étienne Du Ponceau, William Cullen Bryant, Charles Folsom, Félix Pascalis-Ouviere, José Luis Casaseca, book printing in Spanish

The first historical novel written in Spanish and published in the United States, Jicotencal, appeared in Philadelphia in 1826. The exact circumstances surrounding its publication remained unclear for almost two centuries. This mystery was attributable to two causes: first and foremost, the decision of the author not to include his name in the book, and second, no less important, the attribution of publishing responsibility to the printer of the book, William Stavely. This duality created abundant scholarly conjectures about the identity of the author and that person's exact relationship to Stavely. As academic interest in the novel increased, a number of theories coalesced into three types of attribution used in the novel's twentieth-century editions. Some insisted on the anonymity of the author, whereas others credited authorship to Félix Varela or to José María Heredia, either on the basis of textual comparative analysis, or by appealing to these writers' physical presence in Philadelphia close to or at the time of publication. Influenced by those restrictive methodologies, scholars were not able to solve the question of authorship and publishing responsibility.

In 2017, I considered a new approach to the conundrum: the idea was to seek proof about Jicotencal's authorship in two complementary settings: first, by analyzing extant physical copies of the two volumes of the 1826 edition;¹ second, by examining secondary sources contemporaneous to the publication and dissemination of the novel, including newspapers and private correspondence. The evidence gleaned from this effort allowed me to establish that Jicotencal was published by the house of Lanuza, Mendía & Co. (hereafter, Lanuza, Mendía), based in New York City, and that its author was one of the partners of the firm, the Spanish physician Cayetano [End Page 675] Lanuza. In 2018, I published the preliminary results of my research in the journal A Contracorriente: Una revista de estudios latinoamericanos (Barrera-Agarwal). This essay updates those findings, adding evidence that further confirms my previous assertions.

the publisher: lanuza, mendía

A number of copies of Jicotencal are extant, safeguarded in libraries across America and Europe. Three paratextual details of these volumes need to be analyzed: the imprint, the copyright notice and the announcements that appear at the end of the second volume of the book. The first of the announcements advertises that Jicotencal is available at the houses of F. Merino and J. Laval, in Philadelphia, and at the house of Lanuza, Mendía, in New York. The second announcement is even more specific with regard to the latter: it is titled "Libros de fondo que se encuentran en casa de Lanuza Mendía de Nueva York" (Jicotencal; Backlist books found in the house of Lanuza Mendía of New York).

At the time of Jicotencal's publication, the expression "libros de fondo" was a term of art among Spanish-speaking publishers. In his Diccionario de la lengua castellana, published in 1846, Vicente Salvá described "libros de fondo" as those books that the bookseller "has printed on his own, or he has purchased a considerable number of copies" (525).² Three years earlier, Francisco Oliva, one of Barcelona's most important booksellers and publishers, stated that one of his catalogues contained "only the books called de fondo; this is, printed in my house, as it is apparent from the mention of my press and name in the title pages."³

The list of Lanuza, Mendía's "libros de fondo" printed at the end of Jicotencal includes ten books, published between 1825 and 1826. Some of those books bear the name of the firm on the title page, whereas others carry only the imprint of the printing shop in which they were produced. The last title, and the only one printed outside New York City, is Jicotencal (see figure 1). At the end of the announcement there is a section labeled "En Prensa" ("Being Printed")—a detail that no publishing house except...