2 parts in one volume, folio (312 x 192 mm). Title printed in red and black. Portrait frontispiece of the translator, 10 engraved plates. (Some light staining.) Contemporary English calf (rebacked, recornered, worn). Provenance: Isabella Blackett (18th-century signature); Sir Walter John Trevelyan, 8th Baronet (1886-1931) Sheriff of Cornwall (inkstamp); K. E. H. (bookplate). 

 

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, written by the first native historian of the New World, Garcia Lasso de la Vega, also known as "El Inca." This issue with title printed in red and black, and text printed in black, one of four imprint variants of this edition; others include titles printed in black or rubricated text, but no priorty has been established. In his introduction to the 1869 edition of the Royal Commentaries, C. S. Markham notes: "[Rycaut] had a very slight knowledge of the Spanish language and he did not scruple to make wild guesses at the meaning of sentences, and to omit whole chapters. Thus he only gives fourteen out of the twenty-six chapters in the first book, and sixteen out of the twenty-six in the second." ESTC R11045; Palau 354801; Sabin 98760; Wing G-216.

 

Property from the Collection of Meredith Hill Kwiatkowski, Fort Collins, Colorado