HARRISSE, in the Introduction of his Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, enumerates and characterizes many of the bibliographies of Americana, beginning with the chapter, “De Scriptoribus rerum Americanarum,” in the Bibliotheca Classica of Draudius, in 1622.[1] De Laet, in his Nieuwe Wereldt (1625), gives a list of about thirty-seven authorities, which he increased somewhat in later editions.[2] The earliest American catalogue of any moment, however, came from a native Peruvian, Léon y Pinelo, who is usually cited by the latter name only. He had prepared an extensive list; but he published at Madrid, in 1629, a selection of titles only, under the designation of Epitome de la biblioteca oriental i occidental,[3] which included manuscripts as well as books. He had exceptional advantages as chronicler of the Indies.
In 1671, in Montanus’s Nieuwe weereld, and in Ogilby’s America, about 167 authorities are enumerated.
Sabin[4] refers to Cornelius van Beughem’s Bibliographia Historica, 1685, published at Amsterdam, as having the titles of books on America.
The earliest exclusively American catalogue is the Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia of White Kennett,[5] Bishop of Peterborough, published in London in 1713. The arrangement of its sixteen hundred entries is chronological; and it enters under their respective dates the sections of such collections as Hakluyt and Ramusio.[6] It particularly pertains to the English colonies, and more especially to New England, where, in the eighteenth century, three distinctively valuable American libraries are known to have existed,—that of the Mather family, which was in large part destroyed during the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775; that of Thomas Prince, still in large part existing in the Boston Public Library; and that of Governor Hutchinson, scattered by the mob which attacked his house in Boston in 1765.[7]
In 1716 Lenglet du Fresnoy inserted a brief list (sixty titles) in his Méthode pour étudier la géographie. Garcia’s Origen de los Indias de el nuevo mundo, Madrid, 1729, shows a list of about seventeen hundred authors.[8]
In 1737-1738 Barcia enlarged Pinelo’s work, translating all his titles into Spanish, and added numerous other entries which Rich[9] says were “clumsily thrown together.”
Charlevoix prefixed to his Nouvelle France, in 1744, a list with useful comments, which the English reader can readily approach in Dr. Shea’s translation. A price-list which has been preserved of the sale in Paris in 1764, Catalogue des livres des ci-devant soi-disans Jésuites du Collége de Clermont, indicates the lack of competition at that time for those choicer Americana, now so costly.[10] The Regio patronatu Indiarum of Frassus (1775) gives about 1505 authorities. There is a chronological catalogue of books issued in the American colonies previous to 1775, prepared by S. F. Haven, Jr., and appended to the edition of Thomas’s History of Printing, published by the American Antiquarian Society. Though by no means perfect, it is a convenient key to most publications illustrative of American history during the colonial period of the English possessions, and printed in America. Dr. Robertson’s America (1777) shows only 250 works, and it indicates how far short he was of the present advantages in the study of this subject. Clavigero surpassed all his predecessors in the lists accompanying his Storia del Messico, published in 1780,—but the special bibliography of Mexico is examined elsewhere. Equally special, and confined to the English colonies, is the documentary register which Jefferson inserted in his Notes on Virginia; but it serves to show how scanty the records were a hundred years ago compared with the calendars of such material now. Meuzel, in 1782, had published enough of his Bibliotheca Historica to cover the American field, though he never completed the work as planned.
In 1789 an anonymous Bibliotheca Americana of nearly sixteen hundred entries was published in London. It is not of much value. Harrisse and others attribute it to Reid; but by some the author’s name is differently given as Homer, Dalrymple, and Long.[11]
An enumeration of the documentary sources (about 152 entries) used by Muñoz in his Historia del nuevo mundo (1793) is given in Fustér’s Biblioteca Valenciana (ii. 202-234) published at Valencia in 1827-1830.[12]
There is in the Library of Congress (Force Collection) a copy of an Indice de la Coleccion de manuscritos pertinecientes a la historia de las Indias, by Fraggia, Abella, and others, dated at Madrid, 1799.[13]