Item No: #306008 El niño ilustrado ó la ciencia al alcance de los niños: Silabario y libro primero para aprender a leer. José M. Trigo.

19th Century Educational Work

El niño ilustrado ó la ciencia al alcance de los niños: Silabario y libro primero para aprender a leer

Notes: A very scarce and little-known San Francisco Spanish imprint.
This is the first of four beginning readers for Spanish-speakers, illustrated with engravings likely made for other publications. Trigo's text, which relies on rhyme and repetitive sounds, name-checks many Spanish-speaking countries and cities, from Barcelona to Washington, DC, where the book was written.

Trigo, a native of Spain, arrived in the US about 1883, moved to California in the late 1880s and became a key part of Hubert Howe Bancroft's History Company's plan to publish Spanish-language educational materials, which are advertised on the back cover of this book. Within two years, Trigo had filed suit against Bancroft, alleging that he had never received any royalties and that late in 1891, the company stopped selling his books. According to newspaper accounts of the lawsuit, "a good many thousand copies were sold in California and the Spanish countries of the south" (San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 3, 1893).

In 1895, Trigo was in St. Louis operating the Spanish-American Educational Company, which reprinted several of his History Company titles. He was appointed as honorary consul to Spain in St. Louis in 1900 and lived in that city until 1915, when he and two of his sons set out for South America to run the Latin American offices of a midwest barber supply company.

48 pages. 5 by 7-3/8 inches.

Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). In the publisher's printed paper-over-boards binding which shows some surface wear.

Publication: San Francisco de California: The History Company, 1891.

Item No: #306008

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