![Item #324822 Contrato de Edición del Libro Historia Universal de la Infamia. [Typescript Publishing contract, signed by the author and publisher in ink]. Jorge Luis Borges.](https://jamescumminsbookseller.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/324822.jpg?width=768&height=1000&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1681934856)
Signed Contract for Historia Universal de la Infamia
Contrato de Edición del Libro Historia Universal de la Infamia. [Typescript Publishing contract, signed by the author and publisher in ink].
Buenos Aires: 5 May 1935.
Price: $15,000.00
About the item
One of three copies prepared for author, publisher, and Sigifrido Radaelli (named in the contract as arbitrator). 1 page typescript, signed at bottom “J Torrendell” and “Jorge Luis Borges”. 1 vols. 4to. Signed Contract for Historia Universal de la Infamia. Fine. For published book, see Becco 25; Foster A62.1; Helft, p. 42; see also Norman Thomas di Giovanni, “Borges’ Infamy, A Chronology and a Guide” Review 8 (Spring 1973), pp. 6-12.
Item #324822
Signed contract for one of the key books by Jorge Luis Borges, Historia Universal de la Infamia, a collection of short imaginative prose pieces which were his stepping stone to to the remarkable fictions of the late 1930s and 1940s.
Publisher Juan Carlos Torrendell (1895-1961) founded editorial Tor in 1916. His father, who had emigrated from Palma de Mallorca to Buenos Aires in 1912, knew Borges from 1921 and had been among the first to review Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923).
As noted by N.T. di Giovanni, Historia Universal de la Infamia was published by Tor as the third volume in the “Colección Megáfono” series, in an edition of 250 copies. It was the first book of prose by Borges.
A second edition was published by Emecé in 1954 and the book was eventually translated into English as Universal History of Infamy (1972).
