José Espasa Anguera (1840 in La Pobla de Cérvoles (

Lleida Lleida (, ; ; '' see below'') is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital and largest town in Segrià county, the Ponent region and the province of Lleida. Geographically, it is located in the Catalan Central Depression. It ...

) – July 4, 1911 in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

) was a Spanish

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

. He is most famous for having been the driving force behind the prestigious

Enciclopedia Espasa __NOTOC__ The ''Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana'' (also called ''Enciclopedia Espasa'', or ''Enciclopedia Espasa-Calpe'', after its publisher, founded by José Espasa Anguera) is a Spanish encyclopedia. It comprises 72 volume ...

. Coming from a very humble rural family, and still a child, he had to move to Barcelona. There he first was a laborer in a demolition site for the walls of Barcelona. When he was 18 he accepted a job as a paper delivery boy. He was fascinated with the book trade, and learned as much as he could about it. In 1860, he risked his modest savings to establish a small subscription center, the precursor of the Espasa-Calpe publishing house. In this period (1860–77), under the trade name ''Espasa Hermanos'' (Espasa Brothers), published the ''Diccionari de la llengua catalana'' (

Dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

of the

Catalan Language Catalan () is a Western Romance languages, Western Romance language and is the official language of Andorra, and the official language of three autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic I ...

) by Laberinia. In 1875, the ''Poesias catalanas'' (Catalan Poems) by Federico Soler, were published, and became the most notable Catalan poetry publication of the era. Mr. Espasa went on to hire the most popular writers of the day. In 1881, he reached an agreement with his brother-in-law, Manuel Salvat to form a new company, Espasa y Compañía (Espasa and Company; 1881–97). In 1886, they left their spacious location on Aribau Street to a much larger building on Cortes Street. In 1897, Salvat left the venture, which until 1908, operated under the name “José Espasa” and then until the death of Senior Espasa as “Espasa é Hijos” (Espasa and Sons). Espasa's dream of "a Great (Spanish) Encyclopedia" took shape in 1905, first with the publication of weekly instalments, and, from 1908 onwards, in volumes. The magnitude of this enterprise eventually overwhelmed the publishing house and in 1925 they associated with Calpe; the head offices were moved to

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

, and the direction of the company was given to

José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

. Espasa's legacy lives on today as the Espasa-Calpe publishing house—a major publisher of Spanish

reference book A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Espasa Anguera, Jose 1840 births 1911 deaths People from Garrigues (comarca) Spanish publishers (people)