The Episcopal Public Library (BPEB) of the Seminary of Barcelona has completed the cataloguing of an important bibliographic collection on and about the English writer G. K. Chesterton (London, 1874 – Beaconsfield, 1936). This collection, which includes a total of 398 volumes, reached the Library thanks to a donation made by Josep Carbonell i Rodés, an exhaustive collector of Chesterton, to the Facultat de Filosofia de Catalunya at the Ramon Llull University, and through an agreement, the BPEB assumed the hosting, cataloguing and management of this collection.
The temporary scope of the collection spans more than a century: from 1906, with a first edition of the biography of Charles Dickens published in London by Methuen, through to the present day, with editions published in 2020. A number of contemporary English editions of Chesterton’s works may also be found, as well as Catalan translations, such as that of The Five of Swords of 1925, in the collection La novel·la estrangera (n. 19), translated by Cèsar August Jordana i Mayans; or the translation of Heretics of 1928, by Pau Romeva i Ferrer, in an edition of La Nova Revista. As for other languages, the collection includes copies in English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, German, Dutch, Czech and Polish. American editions may also be found, such as an edition of Magic, translated by Elena Ivulich, and published in Buenos Aires in 1956 by Losange.
In order to increase the visibility of this collection, the covers of nearly all the volumes have been added, which in turn enriches the catalogue, provides more information and helps in the identification of volumes.
From the Library we would like to thank the donor for his generosity, which undoubtedly enriches the Library’s holdings and, together with the copies already kept by the Library of and about Chesterton, has helped to form what is possibly the most comprehensive bibliographic collection on the subject in Catalonia. We would also like to thank the institutions that signed the agreement with the BPEB for their willingness to let the Library manage this collection.
You may access the entire list of volumes at this link.