Cronica de la Nueva Espana

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Author: Cervantes de Salazar, Francisco (1514-1575) from the library of Zelia Nuttall and George M Foster

Year: 1914

Publisher: Hispanic Society

Place: Madrid

Description:

xxiv+843 pages with plates and index. Quarto (10 3/4" x 7 3/4") rebound in half red leather with gilt lettering to spine. From the library of Zelia Nuttal and George M Foster. Limited to 500 copies. First edition.

Cervantes de Salazar was one of the principal chroniclers who gathered data on the history and ethnography of Mexico. His most important book Cronica de la Nueva Espana (Chronicle of New Spain), written at the command of City Council. The manuscript of this work was sent by the author to Spain in 1567 with a request for the post of royal chronicler. This manuscript was uncovered in the early 1900s uncatalogued in the National Library of Madrid as an anonymous manuscript. the first volume was published in 1914 and the second and third in 1936. The Chronicle is fragmentary since the first part, which was to include the period up to the conquest of Yucatan, either was never written or was lost; and the second part, which was to be a history of the conquest, breaks off with Columbus sending Villafuerte and Sandoval to the Pacific Ocean. Cervantes de Salazar's sources were the Letters of Cortes; the memoirs of Alonso de Ojeda and Andres de Tapia, captains in Cortes' army; the Memoranda of Motilinia; the work of Lopez de Gomara; and the information gathered from others who had taken part in the conquest who were sill living in Mexico City twenty-five years later from whom he received useful information. The Chronicle is valued for its understanding and evaluation of the events it describes.

Condition:

"With compliments of the Hispanic Society" slip tipped in and slip from the Congresso de los Diputados tipped in to copyright page with Nuttall's name as receiving copy number three which is such labeled of 500 copies. Foster's date of acquiry (10/4/44) on title. Original wrappers bound in and soiled, some wear to edges of title, inner hinge cracked else about very good.

Kemper

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