Cuentos de Hoy y Mañana. Cuadros Politicos y Sociales

New York: Imprenta y Libreria de N. Ponce de Leon, 1883. Very good.. vii,53pp. Modern quarter calf and marbled boards, spine gilt. Inscribed by the author on verso of title page. Manuscript pencil numbering to top corner of each page. Minor foxing. One of the most important and intriguing 19th century Cuban-American imprints, featuring two Socialist 'molality tales' that while lauding the quest for social and economic equally, also decry the risks posed by human nature and totalitarianism upon the practical application of Marxism. It was written by the prominent Cuban émigré Rafael de Castro Palomino, and features a famous prologue by his close friend and colleague, José Martí. From the 1870s to 1890s, New York City was the heart of the Cuban community in exile. During the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), a wave of Cuban dissidents, many being highly educated and with financial resources, arrived in New York, forming a vibrant and politically active community. There they had almost unfettered freedom to publish, raise money, and buy arms to support the struggle in the homeland (especially at the U.S. Government hoped to exploit instability in Cuba for its own imperialistic advantage). From 1881 until 1895, José Martí (1853-1895), the brilliant author, philosopher, poet and journalist, who was the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence', often made New York his home.

Upon Martí's arrival in New York, in 1881, he was greatly assisted by Rafael de Castro Palomino, a long-established Cuban resident of the city. Palomino was a prominent Socialist writer and journalist, being the author of numerous articles and short books. Even though his name comes up frequently, much of Palomino's biography remains hazy. We do know that he was considerably older than Martí, hailed form an affluent Havana family and had been educated in France. Like Martí, he was deeply concerned about the potential excesses and pitfalls of Marxism as applied on the real world. Notably, Martí and Palomino were close friends of Néstor Ponce de León y de la Guardia (1837-1899). An exiled Cuban lawyer and bibliophile, he founded the Imprenta y Librería de N. Ponce de León in the early 1870s, a Spanish-language printing house and bookstore that became the intellectual center of the New York Cuban émigré community. As an interesting side note, he possessed the largest Spanish language private library in New York, featuring more than 1,700 titles, which he made openly available to his colleagues such as Martí and Palomino. The work is relatively rare, and particularly so in commerce. We locate four copies in OCLC, at the University of Florida's Cuban collection, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago. An important work from the Cuban exile community.