Seville, Casa de Hernando Diaz en la calle de la Sierpe, 1571.. First Edition. 2 volumes in 1. Folio (29 x 20 cm.), recent period burgundy morocco, elaborately blind-tooled panels with gilt ornaments in center and at corners, spine with raised bands in five compartments with gilt ornaments, all edges gilt; in a folding cloth case with marbled sides. Large woodcut arms of Spain on each title-page. Small light waterstains in the gutter of the last few leaves. In fine condition. Ink signatures of the author on the title page (flourishes shaved) and on the final leaf. Early ten-line title-page inscription in ink, in lower left margin, asserting that the writer has read this work from the first to the very last page. The inside front cover of the cloth case has a printed paper tag (10 x 5 cm.) of New-York Historical Society, with details about the book typed in. The book contains no ex-library markings. (4), 142 ll. [i.e., 138: pagination skips from 130 to 135]; 130 ll. *** FIRST EDITION of this important early source for the history of Peru, and indeed for the early history of all of Latin America. It is rare because the Council of the Indies interrupted its publication in March 1572, decreeing that all known copies be destroyed on the grounds that the book "related facts contrary to the truth, and others which were different from the truth, and that he had omitted to mention facts which he should have mentioned which would result in a grave danger to the authorities in the Indies." A permit to print was issued in 1729, but the work was again suppressed before printing was completed. The Historia details the conspiracies, rebellions and murders of the years 1542 to ca. 1560. The second part was written in his old age by Fernandez de Palencia, a Spanish soldier who arrived in Peru in 1553. The first part is copied by him from Pedro de la Gasca's apparently unpublished account, which begins with the enactment of Charles V's "New Laws" in 1542. The Laws caused a furor among the conquistadores; Gonzalo Pizarro rebelled, and in 1546 captured and killed the Viceroy of Peru, Blasco Nuez de Vela. Fernandez de Palencia's account picks up with the appointment of Gasca as first president of the Audiencia of Peru. Sent out to restore order after the New Laws were revoked, he routed Pizarro's followers and killed Pizarro. Fernandez continues with an account of the D. Andres Hurtado de Mendoza, Marques de Caete, who served as viceroy for six years beginning in 1555. The work concludes with a history of eleven Inca rulers, religious customs and marriage practices of the Incas, and the Inca calendar (part 2, ff. 125-130). The author was named official chronicler of Peru by the Marques de Caete, and aside from personal correspondence with royalist leaders, had access to other letters, diaries, and official documents. "No history of that period compares with it in the copiousness of its details" (Prescott, Conquest of Peru [1865] II, 474). *** Palau 89549. Sabin 24133. Alden & Landis 571/10. BL Pre-1601 Spanish STC p. 76. Catlogo colectivo F214. Medina, BHA 214. Escudero 649-50. Gallardo 2182. JCB I, i, 244-5. JFB F52. HSA p. 200. Salv 3317. Heredia 3426. Simn Daz X, n¼ 512. Cf. Griffin, Latin America: A Guide to the Historical Literature 2960. Melvyl cites copies at Berkeley and CRL. KVK (51 databases searched) locates one copy at Hochschulbibliothekszentrum North Rhine-Westphalia (with OCLC accession number 801066539, although OCLC does not list HBZ copy); one copy at Biblioteca regionale universitaria-Catania; and repeats Bibliothque nationale de France.
