León Pinelo, Antonio de:

$9,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

EPITOME DE LA BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTAL, Y OCCIDENTAL, NAUTICA, Y GEOGRAFICA.... Second edition. Antonio de León Pinelo (1589-1660) was a Spanish-colonial historian. Born in Cordova de Tucuman and educated at the Jesuit college of Lima, he left the New World for Spain in 1612 and there enjoyed a highly successful career, becoming attorney of the Council of the Indies and later a judge in the Casa de Contratacion in Seville. His Epitome... was originally published in Madrid in 1629 and is here in the second edition, enlarged and annotated by Andres Gonzalez de Barcia. It was the first bibliography for the field of Americana and to this day it remains an important source for scholars and collectors of the colonial era of the New World for its wealth of bibliographic data and most especially information about manuscripts. Rich says of this edition: "[It is] the most complete general bibliography of geographical works, travels, missionary reports, etc." "Ouvrage extremement important pour la bibliographie americaine" - LeClerc.The work is handsomely printed (although erratic in its pagination and signature markings), in double-column format, featuring titlepages in black and red with an engaging small engraved vignette of a ship between pillars reading "Plus" and "Ultra."

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