Hernando Colón’s New World of Books: Toward a Cartography of Knowledge by José María Pérez Fernández and Edward Wilson-Lee

Pioneering information science in a remarkable Renaissance library

Hernando Colón was the second, and illegitimate, son of Christopher Columbus. He also wrote one of the first published biographies of his illustrious father. Hernando, however, was also an important man in his own right, an accomplished scholar, and a collector of books who assembled an ambitious research library of over 15,000 volumes. In 2018, author Edward Wilson-Lee published a very intriguing biography of Hernando entitled The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. My only complaint about that biography was that I wished it had focused more on Hernando’s library. Well, my wish has been granted, and then some, with the 2021 publication of Hernando Colón’s New World of Books by Wilson-Lee and José María Pérez Fernández.

While The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books was aimed at a more general reading audience, Hernando Colón’s New World of Books reads like a scholarly monograph aimed at an audience of Renaissance historians and rare book librarians. It will also appeal, however, to general readers (like myself) with an avid enthusiasm for bibliographic history and a high tolerance for arcane minutiae regarding books and libraries. Hernando wasn’t just a collector of books; he was an obsessive organizer and cataloger of information. The various schemes he invented to catalog, summarize, and access the books in his massive collection might just make him the most important figure in library cataloging between Kallimachos and the Dewey Decimal System. Pérez Fernández and Wilson-Lee examine Hernando’s numerous projects of information management. They point out how his methods were manifestations of the spirit of Renaissance Humanism yet also ahead of their time in how Hernando ordered, categorized, and made sense of the world. To their credit, the authors do not hammer home this thesis relentlessly like many scholarly monographs do. In fact, any overarching argument often seems lost in a morass of detail. Nevertheless, bibliophiles will find it a pleasurable and fascinating morass of detail.

This book is loaded with information on how Hernando established his library and purchased his books. The authors explain how he adapted existing Renaissance networks and mechanisms of international trade and finance to gather and circulate information rather than money. Hernando was also involved in a massive cartographic project to reconcile and consolidate various existing maps and explorer logs into one cohesive and authoritative master map, as well as a pet project of his own to gather detailed geographic information on all the towns in Spain. Pérez-Fernández and Wilson-Lee delve deeply into Hernando’s intricate practices of cataloging and abstracting (in his Book of Epitomes) the volumes in his collection. They also provide a history of what happened to the library after Hernando’s death. The text closes with a handful of important primary source documents either written by Hernando or pertaining to his library. The most interesting of these is the Memoria written by Hernando’s head librarian Juan Pérez, who provides even more delightful details on the workings of the library.

Hernando Colón’s New World of Books is not for the casual reader. By all means read The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books first, if you haven’t done so already. If you find that book as interesting as I did, and you want a whole lot more information on Hernando and his library, then and only then is this the book for you. Those who dare enter here, however, will be happy to get lost in Hernando’s library. The reader will gain a profound admiration for this important unsung Renaissance man and wonder why the memory of his magnificent library has faded into obscurity.
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