Flame Pillar of Rizal

Rizal as Bibliophile: His Reading List

Did you know that Rizal had a list of 2,000 books? And from that number of books, we can tell which were favorite reading list that came along to inspire and encourage his ideals and lifetime. Here's some of his favorites:

• Rizal read fairytales even as an adult and read both those by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. He also translated these children's tales from German into Tagalog and even illustrated these for his nephews and nieces: "Ang Puno ng Pino" (The Little Fir Tree"); "Gahinlalaki" (Thumbelina); "Ang Sugu" (The Angel); and "Ang Batang Babaing May Dalang Sakafuego" (Little Match Girl).

• Rizal had partial read to French literature. He enjoyed "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte-cristo" (it was very like on his El Filibusterismo which he was inspired), and many others.

• Rizal also read English novels like Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield," and other famous book "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

• Rizal read or owned "The Barber of Seville" and "Marriage of Figaro."

• Of course, Rizal read a lot of Filipiniana, mostly books on history. Like his research, the annotated version of "Sucesos de las islas Filipinas" by Antonio de Morga, a work originally published in Mexico in 1609 and reprinted in Paris in 1890 by Rizal himself.

• Rizal owned some very pragmaric books, like Baedeker travel guides to Germany, Central Italy, Paris and Switzerland. He sometimes copied from these books when describing his travels in his letters.

• Rizal owned three Bibles--one in Spanish, a Biblio-Hebraica (Jerusalem Bible today) in two editions, one Catholic, the other a translation from the Latin or Vulgate.

• Rizal read a book, "Colony Building: Money's Java, or How to Manage a Colony," as well as Nasau Lee's "Tea cultivation, cotton and other agricultural experiments in India" (he used this probably when he contemplated the new Calamba in Sandakan North Borneo, now Sabah, and of course when he was in exile in Dapitan).

• Rizal read the memoirs of another great man who was vertically challenged like himself, Napoleon. He also read "Lives and Pictures of the Presidents of the United States" (a similar book, if we are to believe Pio Valenzuela was also in Bonifacio's library/reading list).

• Some books which I cannot imagine Rizal reading were: "The marvels of electricity, "Drawings and ornaments of architecture," and a six-volume set on "Studies of birds."