POLO, Marco.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Libro de las cosas maravillosas que vido en las partes orientales: Third edition in Spanish, the earliest feasibly obtainable in that language. Of the various early versions of Marco Polo, this is of exceptional importance for the translator Rodrigo Santaella's suggestion in the introduction that the regions visited by Polo in Asia were geographically distinct from the lands newly discovered by Columbus. Early editions of Polo's travel account are famously rare in commerce, with only three complete copies of any pre-1530 edition at auction in the last half century. This translation was first published in 1503 and reissued in 1518; no copies of these two early editions are traced at auction and only a handful of examples are in institutions. The last copy of this third edition we traced in commerce was in a Maggs catalogue 75 years ago. Santaella's introduction, titled "Cosmographia", is a survey of the known parts of the world. Challenging the traditional tripartite conception of the lands (Africa, Europe, Asia), Santaella posited the distinction between East and West Indies on the basis of the different natural resources and environments of both regions - a whole year before Vespucci's Mundus Novus (1504). Santaella concludes that Asia, Tarshish, Ophir, Cethim, and the other territories explored by the Portuguese are in the East, while Hispaniola and Antilla (a corruption of "Antindia", meaning "opposite to India") are in the West. This discussion is indicative that within a

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