Dionisio Hidalgo (1809-1866) and the origins of modern Spanish bibliography

Abstract

Dionisio Hidalgo (1809-1866), bookseller, printer, publisher and, above all, bibliophile, has passed into the history of Spanish culture as one of the most important bibliographers of our letters thanks to the great work carried out during most of his life. His conception of Bibliography, far from the traditional scholarly studies of past times, whose selective and exhaustive nature and varied information made them restricted to intellectual elites, gave way, in the middle of the Nineteenth century, to a utilitarian model based on information and dissemination of printed news, aimed at the new reading public of the modern bourgeois society of this time. With him was born the modern Spanish bibliography.