Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo XVI: Catalogo Razonado de Libros Impresos en Mexico de 1539 a 1600

581 pages with facsimile imprints and index. Quarto (11" x 8 3/4") bound in original publisher's quarter leather with gilt lettering to spine in original jacket. This edition edited by A Millares Carlo. Limited to 2000 copies this is a reprint of the 1886 edition.

The pride of Hispanic American scholars and collectors in the work of the sixteenth-century press of Mexico has found its reflection in a group of special bibliographies and bibliographical monographs of which one customarily speaks in superlatives. Without in any sense lessening the degree of praise accorded the other, it can be said that the greatest among them all is the Bibliografiamexicana del siglo XVIof Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, first published in a splendid volume in 1886. That book declared itself on every page to be one of the most distinguished bibliographical works of the century, a noble tribute to the press whose work it recorded. Its historical discussion of the origins of the press in Mexico move the whole question into the realm of scholarly speculation; its full and richly annotated entries of titles and comment upon special copies were exact as well as leisurely and easy in presentation; and its sketches of authors and others concerned in the books described attained in many instances the stature of definitive biographies. Its authority has never lessened, never been seriously impugned. I has never been supplanted, only enlarged and carried on. The Mexicans, Noclas Leon and Emilio Valton; the Chilean Jose Toribio Medina; and the North American, Henry R Wagner, have humbly and zealously followed in its train, adding here a little and there a little, or taking up for elaboration one of its partly developed special aspects, each one adding to the original work and enhancing its reputation among scholars of succeeding generations. (Review from HAHR November 1954)

Condition:

Jacket chipped at corners and head and heal of spine, spine sunned, lightly soiled a very good copy in like jacket.