Barcelona politics under the guise of a children’s grammar. 1 copy worldwide.
Estéban Paluzie y Cantalozella. Batiburrillo obrita para correjir los niños. Barcelona: Imprenta de Paluzie, 1843. 16mo [9.6 x 7.0 cm], 96 pp., with woodcut device on verso of title. Bound in original blue painted wrappers. Spine worn, wrappers abraded, pen trial inside upper cover, red wax seal (“M.C.”) on lower cover. Title a bit toned.
Very rare (1 copy worldwide) first and only edition of this (frankly bizarre) book masquerading as grammar for children but in fact a work about Barcelona social politics following the First Carlist War (1833-40). Batiburrillo obrita para correjir los niños was written and printed in a small 16mo format by the publisher-journalist-educator-paleographer Estéban Paluzie y Cantalozella (1806-73), who haphazardly intersperses pointed comments about the Bombardment of Barcelona (1842) and related actions among lists of random events from the timeline of history and banal observations about language. The work closes with mock templates for letter writing. This copy has on its lower cover a read wax seal carrying the letters “M.C.,” the purpose of which is obscure to me.
Estéban Paluzie y Cantalozella was born in 1806 in Olot, in the province of Girona. He studied in Valencia and in 1840 opened a school in Barcelona. In Barcelona he founded the newspaper El Pregonero, later known as El Avisador Barcelonés and El Barcelonés. He authored many works, including Elementos de aritmética mercantil (1832), Tratado de urbanidad (1839), La taquigrafía al alcance de todos (1844), El Instructor de la Juventud (1845), Paleografía Española (1846), Silabario intuitivo (1867), Olot, super comarca, sobre extinguidos volcanes (1860), and Blasones españoles y apuntes históricos de las 49 capitales de provincia (1869).
OCLC, KVK and BNE locate one copy worldwide of Batiburrillo obrita para correjir los niños (Biblioteca de Catalunya).
*Ramón N. Comas, Biografía de Estéban Paluzíe y Cantalozella, p. 150, no. 18.