Hocquet Caritat Explained

Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat was a French-born bookseller and publisher in New York in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[1] He operated a rental library and a reading room[2] [3] [4] [5] located in 1802 at "City-Hotel, Fenelon's Head, Broad-Way."[6] He served as the "authorized distributor of Minerva Press books'" in the U. States.[7] He stocked some 30,000 volumes[8] including imported titles in English and French language, and occasionally non-print items such as "sparkling white champaign wine."[9]

One of Caritat's contemporary admirers wrote in 1803:

I would place the bust of Caritat among those of the Sosii of Horace, and the Centryphon of Quintillian. He was my only friend at New-York, when the energies of my mind were depressed by the chilling prospect of poverty. His talents, were not meanly cultivated by letters; he could tell a good book from a bad one, which few modern librarians can do. But place aux dames was his maxim, and all the ladies of New-York declared that the library of Mr. Caritat was charming. Its shelves could scarcely sustain the weight of Female Frailty, the Posthumous Daughter, and the Cavern of Woe; they required the aid of the carpenter to support the burden of the Cottage-on-the-Moor, the House of Tynian, and the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne; or they groaned under the multiplied editions of the Devil in Love, More Ghosts, and Rinaldo Rinaldini. Novels were called for by the young and the old; from the tender virgin of thirteen, whose little heart went pit-a-pat at the approach of a beau; to the experienced matron of three score, who could not read without spectacles.[10]

See also

Further reading

Issued by Caritat

Catalogs

About Caritat

Notes and References

  1. Raddin, 1953; cited in: Michael H. Hoeflich. Legal Publishing in Antebellum America. Cambridge University Press, 2010
  2. "Caritat's Reading Room." New-York Evening Post; Date: 08-31-1802
  3. "The Terms of H. Caritat's Literary Room." Chronicle Express (NY); Date: 03-10-1803
  4. Terms of Subscription to H. Caritat's Public Libraries. Weekly Museum (NY), 04-16-1803
  5. For context, see: List of libraries in 19th-century New York City
  6. "At H. Caritat's Book-Store, Literary Assembly-Room, and Circulating Library." Morning Chronicle (NY), 12-16-1802
  7. Sydney Joseph Krause. "Historical Essay" in: Charles Brockden Brown. Arthur Mervyn, or, Memoirs of the year 1793: first and second parts. Kent State University Press, 2002
  8. Book: David H. Stam . International Dictionary of Library Histories . 2001. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Chicago . 1579582443 . Circulating Libraries and Reading Rooms . Hendrik Edelman . 55.
  9. Morning Chronicle (NY), 12-16-1802
  10. John Davis. Travels Of Four Years And a Half in the United States Of America. London: 1803.