Saturnino Calleja

From Hispanopedia
Saturnino Calleja
Portrait of Saturnino Calleja in La Ilustración Española y Americana
Born
Saturnino Calleja Fernández

February 11, 1853
Burgos (Spain)
DiedJuly 7, 1915 (aged 62)
Madrid (Spain)
OccupationsWriter, publisher and translator
SpouseIsabel Gutiérrez
Writing career
GenresChildren's literature, primary education

Saturnino Calleja Fernández (Burgos, February 11, 1853 – Madrid, July 7, 1915) was a Spanish publisher, pedagogue, writer and translator.

He was the founder of Editorial Calleja, and the author of books for primary education and of children's literature.

Biography

Saturnino Calleja Fernández was born in Burgos in 1853, although his family line originated in Quintanadueñas.

His father, Fernando Calleja Santos, founded in 1876 a bookstore and bookbinding business on Calle de la Paz in Madrid, which Saturnino bought in 1879. He turned it into Editorial Calleja, which became the most popular publishing house in Spain, Hispanic America and the Philippines, and which in 1899 published a total of 3,400,000 volumes.

Saturnino Calleja introduced three important innovations into the publishing world of the time:

  • He published large print runs of books and stories (with a very small profit margin, which made prices much cheaper) and illustrated all of them profusely with drawings by the best artists. In this way he produced attractive stories within reach of the pockets of those with the least purchasing power, and thereby accustomed several generations of children to reading.
  • The dimensions of each story were also a novelty, since they were tiny little storybooks that children could collect as if they were trading cards and keep or carry almost anywhere, even in their pockets. Each story measured only about five centimeters wide by about seven high.[1]
  • Furthermore, pedagogy books were at that time scarce, poor and expensive. Calleja published others, based on the most modern European pedagogical trends, filled them with beautiful illustrations (his great motto was "Everything for the education of the child") and distributed them, sometimes at his own expense, among the then extremely poor village schools of Spain (Spanish schoolteachers were held in low regard at the time; see, for example, the popular saying «pasar más hambre que un maestro de escuela», "to be hungrier than a schoolteacher").

In addition to these innovations, Saturnino Calleja founded and directed the magazine La Ilustración de España, whose masthead read: "Newspaper devoted to the defense of the interests of the Spanish Teaching Profession". Its first issue came out in June 1884. That magazine was accompanied by the bulletin El Heraldo del Magisterio, with the same aims and the same contributors. He also created the National Association of the Spanish Teaching Profession and organized the National Assembly of Teachers. With all this he became the undisputed leader of Spanish schoolteachers. In 1888, La Ilustración de España changed its director and owner and defined itself as an "illustrated newspaper of Literature, Sciences, Arts and Fashion".

Editorial Calleja published around 3,000 titles, and not only stories, but also textbooks and pedagogy books (many of them written by Calleja himself), as well as classical literature (several editions of Don Quixote, the first complete edition of Platero y yo, etc.), dictionaries such as the Diccionario manual de la lengua española illustrated with thousands of engravings, geographical maps, portraits of famous men and encyclopedic plates), atlases, and books on medicine, hygiene, law, dance, cooking, etc.

Tomb of Saturnino Calleja in the San Isidro Cemetery

He is very well known for his collection of inexpensive, extremely cheap stories, within reach of every child's pocket that held 5 and 10 céntimos. From this derives the expression "¡Tienes más cuento que Calleja!" ("You have more stories than Calleja!"). Folkloric elements were treated with certain instructive and exemplary tones, and they also highlighted touches of a curious Hispanic casticismo that made them practically unmistakable. A subtle irony floated over them, along with a brazen play with anachronisms and absurd attitudes that cropped up every so often. A number of them were composed by Saturnino Calleja himself; most were produced by anonymous salaried writers, some of them important ones; the exact list is unknown because the publishing house's archives disappeared during the Civil War. The only one known with certainty is José Muñoz Escámez, who produced about a hundred, later collected in the volume Azul Celeste (1902); Juan Ramón Jiménez worked at the publishing house in his youth, and Jesús Sánchez Tena wrote and illustrated stories for the publisher. Between 1915 and 1928, the Cuentos de Calleja reached their highest levels of originality, good taste and innovative character, under the artistic direction of Salvador Bartolozzi. Editorial Calleja also published the more luxurious Perla collection.

Calleja's little stories were the reading matter of all the children who lived in the first decades of the 20th century. They were stories in small print, with a few black-and-white illustrations and with entertaining content; reading them was enjoyable and quick. Thanks to Calleja, Spanish children came to know Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Gulliver's Travels, One Thousand and One Nights and a whole series of versions by Spanish authors. The ending of countless Spanish-language stories is his invention: "...y fueron felices y comieron perdices, y a mí no me dieron porque no quisieron." ("...and they lived happily and ate partridges, and they didn't give me any because they didn't want to.")

Saturnino Calleja died in Madrid on July 7, 1915.[2]

Works

  • Silabario o Cartilla para los niños Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1876.
  • El pensamiento infantil: método de lectura conforme con la inteligencia de los niños Madrid: Saturnino Calleja; Mexico: Herrero Hermanos, 1896 (Imp. de Henrich y Cª), reprinted many times.
  • Rudimentos de Geografía para uso de los niños Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, editor, 1887.
  • Nociones de Historia de España' escritas por Saturnino Calleja, para texto de las escuelas de primera enseñanza Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1883 (Imprenta de M. Minuesa de los Ríos)
  • Biblioteca de las escuelas: textos de las asignaturas de la enseñanza primaria superior, arreglados al programa oficial de ingreso en las normales Madrid: Saturnino Calleja editor, 1898.
  • Catálogo de obras de instrucción y recreo propias para premiar ó para regalar á los niños: se hallan de venta en casa de su editor Saturnino Calleja... y en casi todas las librerías de España y América S.l.: s.n., 1891.
  • Colección escogida de trozos literarios de autores españoles y americanos en prosa y verso Madrid: Saturnino Calleja; Mexico: Guillermo Herrero y Ca., 1892.

Works translated into Spanish

References

  1. ↑ M. Arrizabalaga, «Más cuento que Calleja», ABC, 11/11/2014
  2. ↑ "Sección de noticias". El Magisterio Español (in español) (4.644). Madrid: 68. 9 de julio de 1915. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Bibliography

  • Enrique Fernández de Córdoba y Calleja, Saturnino Calleja y su Editorial. Los Cuentos de Calleja y mucho más. Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 2006.
  • VV. AA. La Editorial Calleja, un agente de modernización educativa en la Restauración. UNED Ediciones, 2002
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