The present edition forms volumes 8 and 9 of the series Historia de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo.

Provenance:  Bookplate of the great 19th-century Mexican collector J. M. Andrade on the front pastedown of each volume.

•  This edition not in Sabin.   19th-century quarter red morocco with red textured cloth sides. Spine with raised bands and very good gilt tooling including center devices in spine compartments. Interiors clean. A very good set.  (25271)

Provenance: Bookplate of Stellita Stapleton (first half of 20th century; see image above right).

•  Palau 24060. Contemporary limp leather with traces of ties; binding worn with a little holing. Title-page torn and repaired with some obscuring of letters; paper browned and text dog-eared with some staining and tattering, resulting in no apparent loss of text. Inked ownership inscriptions on title-page.

Uncommon: We locate five copies in the U.S.

•  Medina, Puebla, 159. Contemporary limp vellum with ties. Front hinge (inside) partially open and old repair to top of spine; text block starting to separate from binding, but still strong. Large private ownership stamp on front free endpaper. Unidentified marca de fuego on top edge. In all, a decent copy. (25111)

•  ESTC R6814; Wing (rev. ed.) B1164; Lowndes 3014; Allibone 2513. Not in Brunet.   Recent quarter morocco and marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title, gilt-ruled raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations. Lower edges (closed) institutionally rubber-stamped; frontispiece recto rubber-stamped and with inked ownership inscription; title-page and last text page pressure-stamped. Pages age-toned with occasional light spotting; edge speckling sometimes bleeding into margins. Lacking final blank (only); all edges speckled brown.  (25935)

the premiere of this one, as unknown as that one is famous, is stirring to visualize.

That Bello wrote this patriotic song is known, and even the first few lines were recorded for history, but beyond that the text is not recorded and is not found in his Obras completas or, apparently anywhere else.

In addition to the historic collaboration of Bello and Carreño, this fabulous document has the distinction of having been printed by Venezuela’s first press, that of Gallagher and Lamb, which only arrived in Caracas in October of 1808, and was almost certainly printed on 24 April, the day after the hymn was first sung!

Very Rare.  This broadside was unknown to both Medina and Pedro Grases. Searches of NUC, OCLC, and RLIN fail to find any copy at all, as is the case when searching the OPACs of the national libraries of Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, France, and England.

•  Not in Medina, Caracas; not in Grases, Historia de la imprenta en Venezuela; not in Villasana. As issued. Worming in foremargin, repaired. A very good copy.

The work was absolutely essential for all merchants and other business people, and for government workers in the treasury department — for milled coins were the exception in Mexican commerce, cob pieces the norm, and raw gold and silver, including dust, were extremely common.

The volume ends with the “Reglas varias, para sacar juntos, o separados en pasta, o en moneda los reales derechos, que se pagan a S. Mag. De el oro y de la plata, y para reducir a toda su ley estos metales.”

An uncommon economic work: We trace fewer than nine copies in the U.S.

This was printed by Doña Maria de Rivera with a red and black title-page, and with woodcut arms on first dedication page. The charming cut of a herald cherub appears after the decima dedicated to the author at the end of the preliminaries.

•  Medina, Mexico, 4073.   Contemporary full Mexican calf, modestly tooled in gilt and with all edges red; recased, new endpapers. Final two leaves little ragged at edges costing a few letters and with small hole at center and short tears at inner margin; old staining and age-toning/browning throughout. There is every indication that this well-produced little volume saw time “in the field”!  (26850)

Rather, the production of a Bible in Spanish fell to a peripatetic exiled Spaniard named Casiodoro de Reina (ca. 1520–94), a man who began his adult life as a monk, came under suspicion of being a “Reformist,” and fled Spain for Geneva — later fleeing that city for a series of others and declaring it “a new Rome” for its intolerance of new ideas. Whether the translation is solely from his pen or is the work of a committee in which he was primus inter pares is not known.

This Bible is known as the “Bible of the Bear” or the “Bear Bible” because of the printer's device on the title-page, a bear at a honey comb, which was the device of Samuel Apiarius. The relationship between Apiarius and the actual printer, Thomas Guarinus, is unresolved. The Old Testament in this translation is based on the Hebrew and derived heavily from the Latin of St. Pagninus and from the Ferrara version. The New Testament is based on the Greek of Erasmus with comparisons to the Vetus Latina and Syriac manuscripts.

There are two states of the title-page, this being state A with the line of type ornaments described in Darlow and Moule.

•  VD16 B2869; Rumball-Petre262; Darlow & Moule 8472; Graesse, I, 386; Palau 2894; Adams B12061.   17th-century English calf, rebacked with new spine gilt extra very suitable in style; leather of covers a bit crackled and variously darkened; small areas of the covers at board edges replaced with new leather sympathetically gilt-tooled. Lacks the blank preliminary leaf and the four leaves at the end of “Annotationes breves sobre los lugares . . . “, both of which are very often lacking, the latter leaves having perhaps (even probably) been printed separately and later. Small piece of front fly-leaf cut away (probably removing an ownership inscription). The occasional instance of light soil or light waterstaining to fore- or bottom margins, sometimes reaching text; a generally clean and good copy. All edges mottled red and blue-green.  (25772)

•  Not in Palau. Original yellow printed wrappers, removed from a nonce volume with stab holes in the inner margins; inside wrappers with a short closed tear and a little shallow chipping, light soiling and a few stray marks. Fold mark down the center and traces of soiling on the top edges.

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In this edition Lic. Pablo de Mendibil has edited the letters into four large chapters and added lithographic portraits of Hidalgo, Morelos, Bravo, Guerrero, and Guadalupe Victoria. They are variously from originals by Gauci or unidentified artists, and are lithographed by either R.Cooper or Englemann & Co.

•  Sabin 47810; Palau 163362 (under Mendibil).   Mid–19th century half red leather, flat spine, machine-made marbled paper on covers and as endpapers, marbled edges. Leather abraded and refurbished; interior clean and nice.  (21727)