Francisco de Paula Coronado

Humanist, encyclopedist, historian, professor, librarian, and bibliophile.

He was born in La Habana, studying pedagogy, civil law, philosophy and letters at the Universidad de La Habana. In 1896 he emigrated to the United States where he was editor of Patria and co-founder of Cacarajícara. After the war ended in 1898, he returned to Cuba where he worked in the Secretaría de Educación and served as Secretary of the Cuban delegation in México from 1902-1904.

Throughout all these years he collaborated in La República, La Habana Elegante, El Fígaro, La Discusión, El Hogar, Cuba y América, La República Ibérica, Social, El Porvenir New York, 1898 and Cuba y Puerto Rico (New York, 1898).

At the end of 1920 he was appointed director of the Biblioteca Nacional, a position he held until his death.

Due to his love of books, and especially Cuban books, he knew how to greatly appreciate the nation's cultural treasure, although in parallel he grew his private library, rich in manuscripts and first editions, essentially through his passion as a bibliophile, without any economic interests mediating, since his private collection is currently owned by the Universidad Central de Las Villas, which acquired it in 1960.

Coronado implemented a classification system of his own creation for organizing the holdings, which he called "rational." In reality it disregarded previous experience, since in 1910 the preparation of the general catalog had been initiated.

This member of the Sociedad Cubana de Teatro, of the Ateneo de La Habana, of the Academia de la Historia de Cuba and of the Academia de la Lengua left to Cuban bibliography very important works such as "Apuntes para la vida del General Antonio Maceo" (1897), "Crímenes de España en Cuba" (1898), "La toma de Cárdenas en 1850" (1900), "Las ediciones de Plácido" (1909) and "Manual de Bibliotecología." In this Manual he reflects his work experience at the Biblioteca Nacional, which was published in 1942 as an agreement of the Congreso de Bibliotecarios, Archiveros y Conservadores de Museos del Caribe.

As a man of his time he used pseudonyms when signing his texts, among them César de Madrid—with which he exercised humorous criticism—Paul Mabeth, El caballero de la blanca luna, Fray Mostén, Pedro Sánchez, Panfilón, Panfilito, Marcelo Du-Quesne, and Clarinete.

He died on November 30, 1946.