DE NUPER SUB D. CAROLO REPERTIS INSULIS, SIMULQ[UE] INCOLARUM MORIBUS

Book Description

Basel: [Adam Petri], 1521.. 43pp. (pp. 20 and 21 misnumbered). Woodcut title border. Small quarto. Later vellum boards. Boards lightly rubbed, endpapers torn. Old faint institutional ink stamp on front free endpaper, titlepage, and verso of final text leaf; small neat ink number on front pastedown and titlepage. Slight tanning in some text margins, early ink marginalia and neat underlining on pp. 32 and 33. Overall, a very good copy. In a half morocco box. Martyr's 1521 Basel letter, which contains information from the lost First Cortés Letter. This is a key work for the New World from 1516 to 1520, including the conquest of Mexico and a description of Cuba. "This is Martyr's first narrative of the discovery made by Grijalva and the expedition of Cortes to Mexico, added to a fuller account of Cuba than was contained in his three decades already printed. Harrisse called this work an extract from the Fourth Decade, but it is evidently a much more important work, Stevens and other authorities defining it as a substitute for the lost first Cortes letter. This work supplements, rather than overlaps other narratives by the author" - Streeter. According to the Church entry on the famous Cortés Letters addressed to Emperor Charles V: "The first of these, known as the Lost First Letter, is supposed to have been written at Vera Cruz, July 10, 1519. Whether it was actually lost or suppressed by the Council for the Indies, at the request of Narvaez, is unknown...As this Letter is mentioned by Cortes in his Second Letter and by other contemporaneous writers, there can be no doubt of its having been written. Extensive researches made by later historians have, however, failed to bring it to light. A publication by Peter Martyr, entitled DE NUPER SUB D. CAROLO REPERTIS INSULIS, published at Basel in 1521, is usually substituted for it." A remarkably important piece of Americana, recounting to Europe for the first time the exploits of Cortés at the beginning of the Conquest. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 521/1. JCB (3)I:79. SABIN 1553. STREETER SALE 8. BORBA DE MORAES, p.530. MEDINA (BHA) 62. STEVENS NUGGETS 1802. HARRISSE 110. CHURCH 47 (ref). JCB GERMAN AMERICANA 521/1.

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