La economía en las colecciones divulgativas del primer tercio del siglo XX: los Manuales Labor

Abstract

In the nineteenth century the collections of «popular science» manuals began to appear in Europe. With ency-clopedic ambition, clear language, manageable format, attractive binding and affordable price, they tried to make accessible to the general public a wide variety of knowledge with simplicity, brevity and rigor. In the first third of the 20th century Spain, the two most relevant collections were the Soler-Gallach Manuals and the Labor Manuals. This paper analyzes how the Economy was treated in the Labor collection, which was an im-portant way of vulgarization and popular dissemination of economic ideas (whereas the Soler-Gallach Manu-als focused only on practical training for the business world). The Labor Manuals —much more ambitious thematically and based on translations of foreign works— contributed to the reception in Spain of the German Historical School