Hocquet Caritat

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]

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. Hendrik Edelman (2001). "Circulating Libraries and Reading Rooms". In David H. Stam. International Dictionary of Library Histories. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. p. 55. ISBN 1579582443.
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.

Further reading

Caritat's catalog, 1799

• H Caritat's Literary Room. Morning Chronicle; Date: 06-08-1803
• Caritat, ed. Bibliothèque américaine: contenant des mémoires sur l'agriculture, le commerce, les manufactures, les moeurs et les usages de l'Amérique; l'analyse des ouvrages scientifiques de ce pays, ainsi que de ceux des Européens qui y ont voyagé; et des extraits des journaux publiés en Amérique, sur tout ce qui peut intéresser le commerc̜ant et l'homme d'état; par une sociéte de savans et d'hommes de lettres. Paris, 1807. Google books

Issued by Caritat

• John Davis. The original letters of Ferdinand and Elisabeth. 1798
• Charles Brockden Brown. Wieland; or The transformation. An American tale. NY: printed by T. & J. Swords, for H. Caritat, 1798
• François René Jean, Baron de Pommereul. Campaign of General Buonaparte in Italy, during the fourth and fifth years of the French republic. By a general officer. 1798
• Charles Brockden Brown. Ormond; or, the Secret Witness. New-York: Printed by G. Forman, for H. Caritat, 1799.
• Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Beauties of the Studies of nature: selected from the works of Saint Pierre. New-York: Re-printed for H. Caritat, bookseller, stationer & librarian, by M.L. & W.A. Davis., 1799.
• Johann Georg Zimmermann. Essay on national pride; translated by Samuel H. Wilcocke. New York: Printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller and librarian, 1799.
• Thomas Morton. Speed the plough: a comedy, in five acts. New-York: re-printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller, no. 153 Broad-way, 1800.
• M.G. Lewis. The East Indian: a comedy, in five acts. New-York: re-printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller, no. 153 Broad-Way, 1800.
• Helen Maria Williams. The political and confidential correspondence of Lewis XVI: with observations on each letter. 1803

Catalogs

• The feast of reason and the flow of the soul. A new explanatory catalogue of H. Caritat's general & increasing circulating library. 1799
• Catalogue des livres francais qui se trouvent chez H. Caritat, libraire et bibliothécaire dans Broad-Way, no. 157. 1799

About Caritat

• George Gates Raddin. An early New York library of fiction : with a checklist of the fiction in H. Caritat's circulating library, no. 1 City hotel, Broadway, New York, 1804. New York : Wilson, 1940.
• George Gates Raddin. Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene (Dover, N.J., 1953)
• Leroy Elwood Kimball. "An account of Hocquet Caritat." Colophon, 1934