Borges and the Literary Marketplace

A fascinating history of Jorge Luis Borges’s efforts to revolutionise and revitalise literature in Latin America

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) stands out as one of the most widely regarded and inventive authors in world literature. Yet the details of his employment history throughout the early part of the twentieth century, which foreground his efforts to develop a worldly reading public, have received scant critical attention. From librarian and cataloguer to editor and publisher, this writer emerges as entrenched in the physical minutiae and social implications of the international book world.

Drawing on years of archival research coupled with bibliographical analysis, Borges and the Literary Marketplace explains how Borges’s more general involvement in the publishing industry influenced not only his formation as a writer, but also global book markets and reading practices in world literature. In this way, it tells the story of Borges’s profound efforts to revolutionise and revitalise literature in Latin America through his varying jobs in the publishing industry.