“…OUR PASSIONATE EFFORTS TO RECAST OUR SOCIAL STRUCTURE”: HANDSOME SPECIAL FACSIMILE EDITIONS OF JOSÉ RIZAL’S IMPORTANT NOVELS, TWICE WARMLY INSCRIBED AT LENGTH BY FERDINAND MARCOS TO ACCLAIMED FOREIGN REPORTER JOSEPH KINGSBURY-SMITH
(MARCOS, Ferdinand) RIZAL, José. Noli Me Tangere. WITH: El Filibusterismo. Manila: Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission, 1961. Together, two volumes. Folio (measuring 9 by 15 inches), original full black morocco gilt, raised bands, original slipcases. $2500.
Deluxe facsimile editions, second printings, of celebrated Philippine novelist José Rizal’s original manuscripts, each volume inscribed by Philippine president and future dictator Ferdinand Marcos to award-winning foreign reporter Joseph Kingsbury-Smith and his wife: in the first volume, “June 21, 1971. Malacanang Palace. Manila, Philippines. To our friends Eileen and Joe, May this facsimile of the original manuscript of Rizal’s novel that laid the moral basis for the Philippine Revolution of 1896 remind you of the country of more than seven thousand islands. Ferdinand Marcos”; in the second, “June 21, 1971. Malacanang Palace. Manila, Philippines. To Eileen and Joe, This is the other novel of the Philippine national hero, who, long before 1896 sought reforms for his country, not revolution. May this remind you of our passionate efforts to recast our social structure. Affectionately, Ferdinand Marcos.”
José Protasio Rizal Mercado Y Alonso Realonda was a “patriot, physician and man of letters who was an inspiration to the Philippine nationalist movement… In 1886 Rizal published his first novel, Noli me tangere (The Social Cancer), a passionate exposure of the evils of Spanish rule in the Philippines. A sequel, El filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed), established his reputation as the leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement… Rizal’s political program included integration of the Philippines as a province of Spain, representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), the replacement of Spanish friars by Filipino priests, freedom of assembly and expression and equality of Filipinos and Spaniards before the law… [Rizal] founded a nonviolent-reform society, the Liga Filipina, in Manila, and was deported to Dapitan in northwest Mindanao. He remained in exile for the next four years. In 1896 the Katipunan, a Filipino nationalist secret society, revolted against Spain. Although he had no connections with that organization and he had had no part in the insurrection, Rizal was arrested and tried for sedition by the military. Found guilty, he was publicly executed by a firing squad in Manila. His martyrdom convinced Filipinos that there was no alternative to independence from Spain” (Britannica Online). The Rizal National Centennial Commission authorized these handsome facsimile reproductions of the author’s two manuscripts. First printed 1957. Texts in Spanish. Ferdinand Marcos—the twice democratically elected president of the Philippines (1965, 1969) who declared martial law and governed as military dictator from 1972 until 1986—inscribed and presented these volumes to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, former national editor of and chief foreign writer for Hearst Newspapers. The series of interviews he (along with William Randolph Hearst, Jr. and Frank Conniff) conducted with Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders won a Pulitzer Prize in 1956.
A fine pair of inscribed volumes.