Xerez, Francisco de:

$30,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

LIBRO PRIMO DE LA CONQUISTA DEL PERU & PROUINCIA DEL CUZCO DE IE INDIE OCCIDENTALI. From the collection of R. David Parsons. The first Italian-language edition, following the first of the previous year (printed in Seville), of Xerez' important firsthand account of the conquest of Peru. As one of the "Men of Cajamarca," Francisco de Xerez holds a very special place among writers on the earliest period of Spanish contact with the Inca of Peru. He was there from day one, a member of the very small band of men who left Panama with Pizarro and Almagro to seek fame and fortune in South America. At Cajamarca he participated in the taking of the Inca leader, Atahualpa, the slaughter of his army, and the sharing of the ransom demanded of the Inca nation for the return of their leader. By training as a notary public and practiced writer, he was by choice Pizarro's secretary/confidant, the two having been close since at least 1524, when they met in Panama; and when in 1534 he returned to Spain, he took with him his share of the wealth of Atahualpa, a broken leg, and a tale to tell that was significant, stirring, and in fact tellable by no other man. He conceived of his book as being at once a socially and politically useful account of Pizarro's deeds and his own, a celebration of the glory of Spain as that was expressing itself in a remote and wondrous New World, and as a true entertainment cast in the tradition of the romance of chivalry; not surprisingly, it was a blockbuster. Appende

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