Readings from Modern Mexican Authors

Copyrighted, 1904 BY FREDERICK STARR Chicago

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED TO SEÑOR DON VICTORIANO AGÜEROS, AUTHOR OF Escritores Mexicanos Contemporaneos , EDITOR OF El Tiempo , PUBLISHER OF La Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos , FAITHFUL FRIEND, VALUED HELPER.



When I began visiting Mexico, in 1894, my knowledge of Mexican authors was limited to those who had written upon its archæology and ethnography. Even the names of its purely literary writers were unknown to me. My first acquaintance with these came from reading some of the writings of Icazbalceta, a critical historian of whom any nation might well be proud, and a man of literary ability. I then sought the books of other Mexican authors and have been accustomed, when in Mexico, to read only those, in such hours of leisure as travel and work have left me. This reading has led me to prepare this little book, in the hope that it may introduce, to some of my countrymen, the literary men of the neighboring Republic.
I call the book Readings from Modern Mexican Authors; I might almost have said Living Mexican Authors, for my intention has been to include only such. I have, for personal reasons, made two exceptions—including Icazbalceta and Altamirano. This I have done because I owe much to their writings and because both were living, when I first visited Mexico.
Mexican authors write, to a notable degree, for periodical publications. Many Mexican newspapers devote space to literary matter and many extensive works in fiction, in history, in social science and political economy have appeared as brief chapters in newspapers and have never been reprinted. Mexico is remarkably fond, also, of literary journals, most of which have a brief existence. Many of the writings of famous Mexican writers exist only in one or other of these forms of fugitive publication, and are almost inaccessible. The tendency to republish in book form grows, however, and Señor Agüeros is doing an excellent work, with his Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos (Library of Mexican Authors), now carried to more than fifty volumes, in which the collected works of good authors, past and present, are being printed.