Journey to the Center of the Library: Rare Books and Provenance

Monday, October 13 marks the anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in Latin America.  Columbus’s voyage made me think of the voyages our books take before arriving on the shelves of the New York Public Library.  Who printed it?  Who owned it previously?  From whom did we buy it?  Researchers are often interested in these questions, which all attempt to uncover a book’s provenance.  In the Rare Book Division we look for clues, both within the book and in secondary sources, to answer questions of provenance and understand a book’s complete voyage.  To illustrate this process, let’s take a look at one such book: Martin de León’s Primera Parte del Sermonario.

As you might guess, a good place to start provenance research is the book’s title page.  While the earliest printed books did not have title pages, this feature evolved quickly and was well-established by the time our book was printed.  Its title page lists the who, when, and where of the book—printed by the widow of Diego Lopez Davalos, in 1614, in Mexico.  A bit of research on Señor Davalos reveals that his printshop was located in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, and that his books were sold by Pedro Arias, a bookseller also working in Mexico City.

After the book left the shop, who owned it?  Prior owners often leave their mark by signing their names or attaching bookplates.  But early colonial Mexico had another method—the marca de fuego, or mark of fire.  This was a brand applied to the book’s edge in a design particular to a certain monastic, collegiate, or personal library.  As a result, books from this period can resemble passports, with each “stop” burned into their pages.  Our book bears two marcas de fuego:  one from the Convent of St. Augustine in Oaxaca and the other from the College of St. Paul in Mexico City.

So the Sermonario spent its early years in Mexico—but how did it get to Fifth Avenue?  We don’t know how long this book graced the shelves of the convent and college, but we do know it was eventually acquired by Paul Wilkinson, a book collector living in Mexico City.  And when Mr. Wilkinson’s library was auctioned off in New York City in 1914, NYPL was there scoop up this book.  We have a fantastic record of this transaction: the 1914 auction catalog, with handwritten notes by Wilberforce Eames, then Chief of NYPL’s American History Division.

So there you have it.  The journey of Martin de León’s Primera Parte del Sermonario, beginning in Mexico City and ending on the third floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.  Imagine all of the voyages waiting to be discovered on our shelves!

Image Credits: Rare Book Division.  New York Public Library.  Astor, Lenox, Tilden Foundations.   Map created with Scribble Maps.