This broadside also importantly marks the end of the 40-year ban on the use of Nahuatl in official publications. Venegas adds (in translation): “And so every one may know the king's desires, and so they may be realized, we order this decree be promulgated everywhere in the Mexican language, the Otomí language, and every other Indian language.” No examples of its publication in those other indigenous languages have been found.

The broadside was not intended to be read by the natives, most of whom were illiterate, but rather was to be read by Nahuatl-speaking town criers.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only four U.S. libraries (UC-San Diego, Lilly, John Carter Brown, and Cushing at Texas A&M) reporting ownership.

•  Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 914; Medina, Mexico, 10533; Torres Lanzas 2609; Ugarte, Obras escritas en lenguas indigenas de Mexico, 421; H. de León-Portilla, Tepuztlahcuilolll, 2812. See also: Mark Morris, “Language in Service of the State: The Nahuatl Counterinsurgency Broadsides of 1810,” in Hispanic American Historical Review 87:3 (2007), pp. 433–70.   Removed from a bound volume, printed on pale blue paper. Two tears in text area with old repair.The bottom margin shows the faintly visible transfer from another copy of the broadside while wet and stacked in the print shop!  (41014)

Father of Mexican Independence

Printed on two sheets precisely glued together to form a seamless whole, in double-column format and with the woodcut seal of the Inquisition in the lower right corner of the lower edge.

Garritz located only the copy in the Biblioteca Nacional and WorldCat locates only seven U.S. institutions holding copies.

•  Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 1137. Not in Palau; Medina, Mexico; Ziga & Espinosa, Adiciones a la imprenta en Mexico; González de Cossío, 510, or González de Cossío, Cien.   Old folds; a few small wormholes touching or costing a very few letters and one larger hole costing five letters, but not impeding reading sense. Slight discoloration along the area where the two sheets are pasted together and at points on vertical fold.  (34599)

In this copy opposite the title-page is an added facsimile map of the province taken from an edition of Augustin Lubin's Orbis Augustinianus, sive, Conventuum ordinis eremitarum Augustini chorographica et topographica descriptio; no map was issued with the book originally.

•  Medina, Mexico,1084; Pinelo-Barcia, Epitome, II, Col. 755; Beristain, I, p. 143; Ternaux 902; Andrade 632.   Recased in contemporary limp vellum with slightly yapp edges showing evidence of now-lost ties; rear free endpaper lacking and all edges mottled. Case marks on front pastedown; last leaf torn cleanly and expertly repaired, one leaf with an old limited ink smear that does not impede reading.A clean, very nice copy of a history offering much first-hand reporting, from a significant press and sometime enhanced, by a former owner, by addition of that helpful map! (41363)

We locate only the copy at Brown University.

•  As issued. Two circular wormholes, one at the left edge of the sheet and one just touching print within the outer border; pleasantly if not quite perfectly clean, and very handsome.  (30389)

Degree defense broadsides were an important source of income for Colonial-era printers in Latin America and the printers offered “package deals” to the families of the graduate and post-graduate degree postulants; the packages were geared to the students' families economic means. Broadsides could be large (folio) or small (8vo), have an engraving or not, have a border of type ornaments or not, and be printed on standard paper or colored paper (usually blue); if one splurged, one could get the announcement printed, as here, on silk. The usual total number of copies printed for each candidate is unknown at this time, but is likely to have been only one or two dozen, and we also don't know if more than one silk copy was printed when that top option was in fact ordered. In extravagant cases, one can imagine one for the degree candidate, one for the parents, one for each godparent, etc.; still, such cases would probably have been few.

Certainly, the printers would have been willing to rake in as much money as possible, on each happy occasion, and the richly beautiful silk mementos — doubtless proudly displayed for years going forward in homes or offices — would have been excellent ongoing advertisements. Equally clearly, however, the number of copies of all of the defense broadsides surviving is small, and the survival of those on silk isvery small.

No copies of this broadside are traced via the usual bibliographies, nor via NUC, WorldCat, COPAC, KVK, CCILA, CCPB, or the OPACs of CONDUMEX, the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, and the national libraries of Spain and Mexico.

•  Not in Medina, Puebla; not in Palau; not Ziga & Espinosa, Adiciones a la imprenta en Mexico; not in Garritz, Impresos novohispanos; not in Gavito, Adiciones a la Imprenta en la Puebla.   Blue-green silk with braided edges using gold and silver metallic thread, and with blue tassels incorporating silver thread and fittings attached on all corners. Minimal wear andstunningly attractive.  (34730)

•  Medina, Mexico, 79191; Palau 6095; on Alcocer, see: Archivo biográfico de España, Portugal e Iberoamérica, fiche 23, frames 47–49.   Contemporary cockled vellum, lacking the buttons for its loops, and lacking also the engraving; a very few light stains to a very few pages. Actually, quite a nice copy of the text.  (36658)

•  Stitched in wrappers with a facsimile of the title-page of the Vida del padre maestro Ignacio de Loyola on the front one; color of wrapper may vary from the one shown. New.  (40809)

Twenty-six special copies lettered from A to Zwere “set aside to be bound in quarter vellum hard covers with a handsome slipcase, by Jace Graf of Cloverleaf Studio in Austin, Texas.”   In these deluxe copies, the full-page illustrations are accomplished in green ink, and in each one anadded colophon leaf bears the signatures of the translator, illustrator, typefounder, printer, and binder, along with the copy's letter designation. These special features are represented in the images below; all copies have been sold.

Honored to serve as the volume's sole U.S. distributor, we are ready to take your orders.

•  New.  (32346)

We locate only two published works by Arrieta, this and a novena. Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only four U.S. libraries reporting ownership (JCB, Bancroft, Penn, NYPL).

•  Medina, Mexico, 4978; Palau 17531; Beristain, I, p. 103; Ramirez 779; Sutro, Supplement, p. 38.   Removed from a nonce volume. Worming in upper margin and first two or three lines of text, costing letters and an occasional word; lower outer corner of all preliminary leaves silverfish-gnawed with loss of paper and some very few words of two sidenotes. A copy with condition problems, but also a copy withthe portrait printed specially in red.  (38137)

WorldCat locates copies at only three U.S. libraries (NYPL, JCB, Cushing).

•  Medina, Mexico, 2064.   Removed from a nonce volume and now in plain wrappers; evidence of marca de fuego in upper edge. Wormtracking to gutter margin near page-tops, touching or occasionally costing a letter; otherwise, and saving an old small inkblot to title-page, in very clean and even fresh condition.  (41414)

Provenance:  Sold by the Linga Library of Hamburg as a duplicate. Pencil notes of a Spanish bookseller.

•  Medina, Mexico, 2478; Garcia Icazbalceta, Lenguas, 9; Vinaza 271; Newberry Library, Ayer Indians, Nahuatl 18 (incomplete, lacking title-leaf); H. de León-Portilla, Tepuztlahcuilolli, 240.   Recased in modern vellum with button and loop ties, some few leaves strengthened at inner margins. Last leaf of text torn in lower margin and expertly repaired, costing small portion of two letters; a bit of staining at some edges, particularly in early part of volume. Small round old stamp “BS” to front free endpaper, leaves filled with manuscript annotation at end as above. Very good, and very interesting. (34576)

The Grandeza was Balbuena's first published work, appearing from the Ocharte press in Mexico in 1604. A descriptive epic poem about Mexico City at the close of the 16th century, paying homage to its external material aspects and to its spiritual, political, and social ones as well, it is a major work of Novohispanic literature. The Siglo de Oro was the author's second published work; it first appeared in Madrid in 1608 and is composed of a series of 12 eclogues.

Binding:  Contemporary acid-stained sheep (Valencia style) in hues of green and brown, covers with a gilt roll border and a center device of the Spanish royal coat of arms, spine gilt extra.

•  Palau 22339; Simón Díaz 2286; Maggs, Spanish Books, 71a. On Balbuena, see: Archivo biográfico de España, Portugal e Iberoamérica, fiche 90, frames 7–16.   Bound as above, joints and extremities mildly rubbed. Title-page with spots of pinhole worming, front fly-leaf with one such. Pages clean, portrait handsome.  (38393)

The present edition forms volumes 8 and 9 of the series Historia de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo.

Provenance:  Bookplate of the great 19th-century Mexican collector J. M. Andrade on the front pastedown of each volume.

•  This edition not in Sabin.   19th-century quarter red morocco with red textured cloth sides. Spine with raised bands and very good gilt tooling including center devices in spine compartments. Interiors clean. A very good set.  (25271)

•  Grajales & Burrus, Bibliografia guadalupana, 374.   Sewn as issued. Dust-soiled, especially to title-page and edges, with top and bottom edges bent. Overall a good++ copy.  (34681)

•  Medina, Mexico, 7957; Grajales & Burrus, Bibliografia guadalupana, 273; Palau 25095; Maggs, Bibl. Amer., I, 1141, and VI, 5899; Beristain, I, 141; Puttick & Simpson, Bibliotheca Mejicana, 167; Sutro, p. 33.   Contemporary acid-stained sheep (Valenciana style) with gilt spine, marbled endpapers and all edges red; fore-edge of rear cover gnawed upon by a rodent, but not too seriously. A clean, attractive copy of a book both widely and deeply interesting.  (36633)

The Spanish-language account of the burial includesa detailed description of the funeral monument (i.e., cenotaph) that the city erected for the archbishop, including the inscriptions and epigrams that were by F.J. Alegre. Following the last page of the text, there isa large folding engraved plate by Manuel Villavicencio after the design of the monument by Miguel Cabrera, “pintor americano.” The engraving is detailed, exquisite, and includes a measure of scale.

A good source for the study of Mexican colonial architecture, commemorative ceremonies, and treatment of and thinking about death.

•  Palau 6584; Medina, Mexico, 5067; DeBacker-Sommervogel, I, 153.   Contemporary vellum with remnants of ties; spine damaged with loss to hungry rodents not affecting paper. Two short tears in margin of folding plate, well away from image. A very clean, very good copy.  (36410)

•  A laced-through binding in light green heavy wrappers. As new.  (40732)

The prominent Mexican poet David Huerta writes, “The secret of Coral Bracho's poetry, its prodigious originality, can be traced to its tendency to surge like a living voice, a silky impetuous torrent.” Her biography at the Poetry Foundation website observes, “Bracho’s impact on Mexican poetry has been compared to poet John Ashbery’s influence on American verse. Bracho’s layered, long-lined poems attend equally to sound patterns and lush, unspooling imagery.” Fellow poet Forrest Gander has said, “Her diction spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound. . . . Bracho’s early poems make sense first as music, and music propels them.”

Bracho's poetry has appeared in dozens of anthologies of the genre. And further recognizing her achievements as a poet are her Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

From the famous handpress of Juan Pascoe and limited to 120 copies, this featuresa cunning cut of an armadillo on the title-page.

•  New, sewn in textured charcoal wrappers.  (41408)