The seven lectures which make up this volume were delivered by Borges in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Coliseo, at intervals between June and August 1977. In an Epilogue to the first Spanish edition of the book, published in Mexico in 1980, Roy Bartholomew tells how the lectures were widely taped, appeared later as pirated records, and were widely in a cut and mangled form, in the literary supplement of a Buenos Aires newspaper.