-THE FIRST CALENDARIO THAT LIZARDI ISSUED -

[Mexico--Colonial Imprint]. lLizardi, José Joaquín Eugenio Fernández de . CALENDARIO Y PRONOSTICO DEL PENSADOR MEXICANO, PARA EL AÑO BISEXTO DE 1816. En la Officina de Doña Maria Fernandez de Jáuregui, calle de Santo Domingo, Mexico City, 1816. Con las licencias necesarias. Broadsheet, oblong folio. 12 1/4 x 16 3/4 in. (31 x 42.5 cm). Text on recto and verso in seven columns, all contained within a typographic rectangle. Old folds, small pinhole at center fold, several very small scattered wormholes. Vg cond.

Lizardi was born in Mexico City in 1776; his father was a physician who supplemented his income by writing, and his mother was the daughter of a Puebla bookseller. When his father died unexpectedly in 1798, he left Colegio de San Ildefonso and entered the civil service at Taxco. It was here in 1810, as the long and drawn out war for independence broke out across Mexico, that he came to the attention of both insurgent and loyalist factions. Lizardi had ascended through the civil service ranks to the role of Teniente de Justica, the acting head of the local government, and when insurgent forces took Taxco in November, he turned over its armory to the rebels in the hope of sparing his city and its residents further bloodshed. At the same time, he also passed information about rebel troop movements to the viceroy, Francisco Javier Venegas. Nevertheless, Lizardi was arrested as a rebel sympathizer when royalists retook the city in January. Only months later, after appealing to Venegas directly, were charges against him dropped. Yet his post and home were not returned, and lacking other opportunities, he turned to his pen.

This impressive broadsheet, Calendario y Pronostico del Pensador Mexicano, para el Año Bisexto de 1816, is the first calendario that Lizardi issued. Both the recto and verso display the title printed at the top of the sheet and a central column flanked by three equal sized columns to its left and right. The text of the title is divided on each side of the sheet, recto and verso, by a circular monogram, that of Jesus Christ on the recto and of Mary, Lady of Guadalupe, on the verso. Below each of the two monograms is a short poem by Lizardi that does not appear elsewhere: the poem on the recto is titled “Decima a San Felipe de Jesus,” while that on the verso is “Decima a Maria Santisima de Guadalupe.” Each of the twelve flanking columns is devoted to a specific month and opens with a clever, four-line poem about the month.

Relevant sources:

Radin, Paul

1939 Some Newly Discovered Poems and Pamphlets of J. J. Ferná ndez de Lizardi (El PensadorY

Mexicano). Prepared under the direction of Paul Radin. Occasional Papers, Mexican

History Series, No. 1. Sutro Branch, California State Library, San Francisco.

Primary Sources

1927 Fernández de Lizardi as a Pamphleteer. The Hispanic American Historical Review 7(1):104-

123.

Vogely, Nancy

2004 Introduction. In The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Pedro Sarmiento, Written by

Himself for His Children, by José Joaquín Eugenio Fernández de Lizardi Gutiérrez,

translated by David Frye, pp. xi-xxx. Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis.

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