Description

OVID TRANSLATED BY A MEXICAN POET
Two volumes, 8vo (150x96 mm). [4: title page and Advertencia], 229, [1 blank]; [2: title page], 221 [recte 219], [1 blank] pp. Pages 219/220 omitted in pagination. Contemporary or slighlty later calf, gilt spine with lettering piece, marbled endleaves (worn and rubbed). On the front pastedown bookplate of Jesús Guzmán y R.G. (“Ex libris JG RG Cave! ne cadas Mexici Nonis Junii a.D. MDCCCLXIX”) and his stamp on the title page verso (dated 14 June 1920). Some marginal tears, but a very good, clean copy.
Extremely rare first and only edition of the Spanish translation by Anastasio María de Ochoa y Acuña of the Heroides (or Letters of Heroines), a collection of epistolary poems written by the Roman poet Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by various aggrieved heroines from Greek and Roman mythology.
Ochoa y Acuña was born in Huichapan, Hidalgo, in 1783. He studied at the College of San Ildefonso and at the Royal and Pontifical University. In 1813, he decided to join the clergy, studying at the Conciliar Seminary of Mexico, where he was ordained a priest in December 1816, at the age of 34. From 1817 to 1827, he served as a parish priest in Querétaro. From 1828 onwards, he devoted himself exclusively to literary work. He was a member of the Arcadia Mexicana and translated classical and modern works from Latin, French, and Italian. Much of his poetic work appeared in “El Diario de México”, but he also published two poetry collections, Poesías satíricas y morales (Mexico, 1812) and Poesías de un Mexicano, printed in 1828 both in Mexico City and New York. He favoured the festive genre and he is considered as the finest chronicler of the social life of his era, much like José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi. Ochoa is credited with introducing nacionalismo pintoresco (‘picturesque nationalism') into poetry. He died of cholera in Mexico City in 1833 (cf. A. Muñoz Fernández, Fichero bio-bibliográfico de la literatura mexicana del siglo XIX, Mexico, 1995, vol. 2, s.v.).
Palau y Dulcet, 207556.