Cortés and the conquest of Mexico - photo 1

Cortés and the conquest of Mexico

Lot 8
16.10.2020 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 1 500
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 411415
Lot 8 | Cortés and the conquest of Mexico
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
DÍAZ DEL CASTILLO, Bernal (c.1492-1581). Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva-España. Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno, 1632 [but later].

Early edition of the most important work on Cortés and the conquest of Mexico by its principal authority. While this edition—with the letterpress title, 211 chapters, and the same number of leaves—is identified by Sabin as the first edition, first issue, recent scholarship has concluded that it is in fact a later pirated edition, probably printed in the late 17th or early 18th centuries and differing from the true first edition in small typographical and bibliographical points. Díaz del Castillo participated in some 120 battles during Cortés’s expedition through Mexico and Central America and was an eyewitness to the conquest of the Aztecs, from 1519 to 1521. In 1524, he accompanied Cortés on the expedition to Honduras. He wrote this work between 1552 and 1557 to refute the previously published narrative of the conquest by López de Gómara, Chaplain of the Cortés expedition. Sabin 19978 (as first edition, first issue); Obadiah Rich, Catalogue of Books Relating Principally to America, 200; see Carlos Fernández González, “Análisis tipográfico de las dos primeras ediciones de la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España de Bernal Díaz del Castillo,” in Boletín De La Real Academia Española, July-Dec. 2011 (state B, pp. 8-10).

Folio (270 x 194mm). Ornamental title border, woodcut initials and ornaments (title remargined; 155 x 63mm corner section of leaf 35 torn, with loss of portions of 24 lines of text, here provided in tipped-in typed facsimile; some scattered light spotting; light dampstains and repaired worm tracks on inner margin of several leaves at end). 19th century mottled sheep, red morocco titling piece (upper headcap worn, spine and covers lightly rubbed; corners of back flyleaf torn). Provenance: Joaquín Cortina Goribar (1906-1991, Mexican historian; bookplate).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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01.10.2020 – 16.10.2020
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