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Exploring Europe at the British Library

05 January 2015

Learning English: Barcelona 1846

Anglophilia in Spain is not the mirror image of Hispanophilia in Britain. The first is much older – in bibliographical terms – than the second.  One indication is the history of translations: Cervantes was first translated into English in 1612 and Shakespeare into Spanish (Romeo) in 1780.

For Hispanophilia in Britain, a resource is R. C. Alston, A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, vol. 12, pt 2 (Ilkley, 1987;  British Library X.985/532.); partly supplemented by Foreign-language printing in London, 1500-1900 (Boston Spa, 2002; 2708.h.1059).

For Anglophilia in Spain the resource is Palau, Manual del librero hispanoamericano, Index IV, pp. 144-45, ‘Lingüística inglesa’. (RAR 090.98)

Alston and Palau show that the first Spanish-English grammar-phrase books and dictionaries were published in England, beginning with an anonymous Spanish Grammar in 1554.  They were usually written by exiles.  In Spain, the first books on English date from 1769.

Why? The status of English was low. It did not have an international role. No Spanish diplomat needed English, as it was not a transferable skill. Gondomar was ambassador to court of James I, and he bought some English books, but he and James conversed in French and got on mightily: they called themselves “Les deux Iacques”.

Spanish interest in English seems to date from the nineteenth century, presumably as an indication of growing British political and economic power.

One piece of evidence on this occasion is this reader for Spaniards.

Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas, Crestomatía inglesa, ó sea selectas de los escritores mas eminentes de la Gran Bretaña, así en prosa como en verso ...,  2nd edn (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipografico a cargo de don Juan Oliveres, [1846]).  RB.23.b.4208.

Antonio Bergnes de Las Casas (1801-1879) was a remarkable man: self-taught, he was the founder of Greek studies at the new University of Barcelona (refounded in 1837), and ran one of the first circulating libraries in the country.  His Quaker and Liberal views made him something of an outsider. As a publisher, he produced essentially utilitarian books on history, practical manuals (mostly translations), grammars and readers in Latin and Greek, and translations from Sir Walter Scott, Goldsmith and Gibbon.  

This book (first edition 1840) is a reader designed to take the Spanish student from the rudiments to Shakespeare in 259 pages. The first passages are specially written for teaching purposes and are comprehensively glossed in Spanish. The later texts are taken from works of literature chiefly of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are lightly annotated in English. This second edition also includes a section on commercial correspondence.

Bergnes(BT) page 2                                               The first exercise in Bergnes’ Crestomatía inglesa.

The corpus of English literature here is formidable.  Items 1-53 are not signed.  Followed by prose selections: Dr Percival, Dr Benjamin Franklin, Various tales (3),  Dodsley 6, Dr Enfield 2, Robertson 2, Mackenzie 2, The Spectator 2, Watts, Gibbon, Hervey, The Correspondents, Sterne, Rambler, Edinburgh Review, Washington Irving, Walter Scott (incl. Scotticisms in The Antiquary), [J. F.] Cooper, Marryat, Bulwer [Lytton], Miss Edgeworth, Dickens, Teodore Hook; next The Beauties of English Poetry: Colley Cibber, Goldsmith 3, Thomson 2 (The Pleasures of retirement), Shakespeare 3 (Hamlet’s Soliloquy; Macbeth’s Vision), Pope 4 (1 Iliad), Cunningham 2, Addison 4, H. More, Gray 2, Cowper, Scott 4, Logan, Shenstone, Moore, Opie, Lowth, Horne, Collins 2, Ledyard, Burns, Charlotte Smith 3, Rogers, Langhorne, Dryden 2, Parnell, Milton 2, Bryon, Campbell.

Bergnes(BT) Orphan Boy                                                 By page 222 Bergnes’ students are tackling poetry.

English studies were not a feature of mainstream Spanish education until the 1970s.  This book is therefore a landmark in the history of the study of English, as well as a cross section of  the literary canon of the mid-19th century.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies


References:

J. A. Clua Serena, ‘Bergnes de las Casas, helenista del sexenio liberal español: semblanza intelectual’, Estudios Clásicos, 92 (1987), 59-74.
http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6887


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