First Book by a Mexican American Author
Elementos de la lengua inglesa para uso de los españoles
Notes: The first book printed in Spanish in New York (according to the author on p. 310, and your cataloguer has not located an earlier book). Elementos is also arguably the first book by a Mexican American writer, and one of the first books written specifically for Hispanics in the US. Elementos is a landmark book in American Spanish publishing, New York publishing history, Spanish-English philology, and Mexican American studies. OCLC locates 14 copies, but the book is scarce in commerce.
Velázquez is perhaps most recognized as the author of the Velázquez English-Spanish dictionary, first published in 1852 and in print for 150 years. He was born in Mexico in 1778, most likely in the capital, where his wealthy family had lived for more than a hundred years. He apparently came to the US to study in the late 18th century and held various Spanish government posts in Europe until 1809, when he returned to the US for good. He married, raised a family, worked as a Spanish professor at Columbia University, and then died in New York in 1860. In 1852, he published the first of many editions on two continents of his English-Spanish dictionary.
Little, if any, critical attention has been paid to Velázquez in the US and as best I can determine, he has not been subject to any of the "recovery" efforts to identify and recognize early Hispanic writers in the US. He has, however, received recent critical attention in Spain.
Maria del Mar Vilar García devotes some 20 pages to Velázquez in her El español, segunda lengua en los Estado Unidos (Universidad de Murcia, 2008, third edition). She concludes that he was one of the great pillars of Spanish teaching in the US during the 19th century [unos de los "grandes pilares de la enseñanza del español en los Estados Unidos durante el siglo XIX" (p. 350)]. Cecilio Garriga Escribano and Raquel Gállego Paz, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, consider his dictionary in their paper, "Velázquez de la Cadena y la lexicografía bilingüe inglés / español" (2008). Rafael Nevado Gómez explores another of his books in "Mariano Velázquez de la Cadena (1778–1860) y la adaptación del Manual Ollendorff para la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras" (Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historiografía, 2017).
With Elementos, Velázquez inaugurated a robust century of Spanish-language publishing in New York. Prior to 1810, most US Spanish imprints originated in Philadelphia which, while briefly the capital of the US, was the American base of Spanish diplomats from the peninsula, as well as present-day Mexico and South America. But with revolution shaking the Hispanic world, expatriates, exiles, and immigrants were settling in New York in ever greater numbers. These first Hispanic immigrants were Velázquez's audience.
In his prologue, he explains his motivations for this book, "La escacez que hay de Gramaticas Inglesa para uso de los Españoles, en los Estados Unidos, ha sido lo unico que me ha movido á presentar éstos Elementos, y no el desea de paracer Autor" (capitalization and diacritical marks from the original). [My only motivation for publishing Elementos is the scarcity of English Grammars for Spaniards in the United States, not a desire to look like an Author]. At the time this book was written, the term "españoles" would have encompassed all of Spanish-speaking Latin America as well as Spain.
vi, [7]-432 pages.
Edition + Condition: Bound in contemporary sheep, with a red calf spine label. Covers somewhat scuffed, but generally a solid copy.
Publication: Nueva York: Por Roberto McDermut en la Imprenta de Jorge Long, 1810.
Item No: #35513
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