A century ago, there was a serious effort to have him canonized. Today some historians see him as personifying the exploitation of an innocent New World by a brutal and greedy Europe. He has been given a place in myth as well as in history. With this collection, students of both the historical and the mythical Columbus will now have conveniently on microfiche the bulk of the Library of Congress's great collection of printed documents and writings on the discoverer and his times. UPA has filmed approximately 505 titles that are of lasting interest either for what they tell of Columbus or what they reflect of their own times.
Most titles are long out of print.
The collection is offered in two parts. Works in English includes among 235 titles better-known writers such as Henry Harrisse, John Boyd Thacher, Washington Irving, and Justin Winsor. There are historical monographs and bibliographies, orations, poems, plays, novels, some juvenilia, anonymous popular works, and translations of influential writers such as the poet Alphonse M. L. de Lamartine and Columbus's son, Fernando Col n. Non-English Works includes approximately 270 titles with imprints from all the major European publishing centers through the early 1920s, and from Mexico City and Lima, in all major European languages. Many are scholarly monographs published during the quatercentenary of 1492.