Narrative
Sketches of Life in Chile, 1841-1851
Artículos de costumbres
Synopsis
Sketches of manners published in the press from April 1841 to September 1847, signed Jotabeche, in which humour and satire lie in wait for everyone's failings. We meet the provincial who has come up to Santiago, the miners and the hospice of Chañarcillo, the religious and social life of Copiapó, the arrival of the steamers at Caldera, and the spread of liberal ideas. The author appears in them under his pseudonym, through letters and newspaper pages.
Context
The articles appeared first in El Mercurio of Valparaíso, then in El Semanario of Santiago and in El Copiapino, which the author founded in 1845, before being collected in a volume at the Imprenta Chilena in 1847. The pseudonym, according to a Copiapó press article preserved by Memoria Chilena, takes the initials of an Argentine friend, Juan Bautista Chenau. The author admitted in a letter that he read Larra every day, and Raúl Silva Castro ranks him among the animators of the movement of 1842. Simon Collier published in 2002 an English selection of forty-one articles.
Who it is for
Short texts, to be read separately, in a nineteenth-century Spanish rich in mining vocabulary; a selection exists in English.
Prizes and reception
For Alberto Edwards, cited by Memoria Chilena, a deep and fine observation of the ridiculous side of men and things.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.