Arte de escribir por reglas y con muestras, segun la doctrina de los mejores autores y modernos, estrangeros y nacionales, acompañado de unos principios de Arithmética, Gramática y Ortografia Castellana…

Madrid: En la imprenta de la viuda de Don Joaquin Ibarra, 1802 Second edition, revised, of this celebrated book on writing. The plates show the geometric construction of the alphabet and the proportions for various sizes of script, as well as giving specimens of different types of letters, some with elaborate decoration. The section on arithmetic is remarkable. Contemporary limp vellum with title in gilt on spine. Small quarto. With fifty-eight engraved plates designed by the author, engraved by Asensio, Castro, Gangioti. Engraved title-page. Tear in vellum repaired on front cover. Contemporary ownership signature on front free endpaper, library rubberstamp on printed title, rubberstamped numeral on half-title. One gathering browned, a little light foxing otherwise. Overall a good, clean copy. Torio (1759-1820) was a member of the Royal Society for Economics in Madrid, and keeper of archives to the Marques de Astorga. He "was a man of extensive culture who had studied several languages, an uncommon accomplishment for a master of calligraphy at that time. Torio, in addition to being an excellent writing master, is above all praised as an able and impartial critic and historian of the art, credited with reforming the bad taste which he considered prevalent among the Spanish scribes of his time. The bibliographer, Cotarelo y Mori, gives extensive space to Torio in his important work on the Spanish calligraphers…Torio's principal work was the Arte de escribir, which was celebrated by his contemporaries and makes a fundamental contribution to the development of Spanish calligraphy" (Morison, Calligraphy 1535-1885, Milano: 1962, p. 165).

The present work was printed by Manuela Contera de Ibarra (d. ca. 1805), the widow of Joaquín Ibarra y Marín (1725 - 1785), who ran the Ibarra workshop after her husband's death. Joaquín Ibarra's death caused a rift in the family that led the couple's eldest sons to work for the printer Gerónimo Ortega while their mother and younger sister maintained the Ibarra workshop, printing as "la viuda de Don Joaquín Ibarra" and "la viuda de Ibarra, hijos y compañía." Manuela Ibarra printed works including the lauded second edition of Nicolas Antonio's Bibliotheca Hispana (1788), "[la] obra capital de la bibliografía española" (Palau 13310), as well as publications for the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the premier Spanish artistic institution. In 1805, Manuela Ibarra was succeeded as head of the workshop by the couple's daughter, whose imprint "la hija de Ibarra" appears in publications until 1821. The Ibarras' children kept the workshop running until 1836. (See: Acín Fanlo, José Luis, and Pablo Murillo López, eds. Joaquín Ibarra y Marín: Impresor, 1725 – 1785, 1993, pp. 120-121.)