Ecos Perdidos. Coleccion de Poesias

Nueva York: Juan M. Macias, 1868. Very good.. [viii],158pp. Original brown publisher's cloth, spine gilt. Spine lightly faded, minor wear. Minor toning and scattered foxing. A scarce and highly-regarded collection of lyrical poetry written by Jose Pedro Varela, an important Uruguayan educator and author of the latter 19th century. The present work was printed in New York during Varela's time studying educational theory in the United States. The title of the book translates to Lost Echoes, providing a sense of Varela's lyricism. The work is laid out in four parts; Varela dedicates the first part, which he calls "Palpitations," to his mother and the second part, called "Meditations," to his friend Carlos Maria Ramirez. The third section is comprised of four longer poems as part of a cycle called "El Suicida." The fourth and final section is a prose "cuento" (or tale) titled "La Flor de la Vida." Each of the poems is dated at the end, often with the place of composition; interestingly, Varela's dedication to Ramirez in the second part is dated February 19, 1868 in New York, likely while the work was in press, or just before.

"Varela's leadership proved essential in the country's development of free, universal, and secular education. His early contact with educational theory came from his father, who, in 1846, translated from the French the first book on pedagogy to be published in the Plata region. During a trip to the United States in 1867 Varela met Argentine educator and future president Domingo Sarmiento, whose writings on public education he admired. Under the influence of Sarmiento and the Bostonian educator Horace Mann, Varela decided to dedicate his life to Uruguayan educational reform. In 1868 Varela published the first of many articles in the Montevidean press promoting free and universal elementary schooling.... In addition to his books on education, Varela wrote a volume of lyrical poems, Ecos Perdidos, which rates among the finest Uruguayan lyrical expressions of the period" - encyclopedia.com. OCLC records a dozen institutional copies, mostly in California and Texas.