•  Shaw & Shoemaker 1953. On Brown, see: Dictionary of National Biography, VII, 37–38 (under William Laurence Brown). Relatively unworn library buckram; library name pressure-stamped on covers and its bookplate to front pastedown. Hinges reinforced at rebinding with cloth and first few pages fragile along line of reinforcement; front free endpaper separated. Title-page and a few others faintly stamped, title-page with crossed-out ownership inscription. Some offsetting; a very few instances of pencilled underlining; corners occasionally dog-eared or chipped. Overall a fairly decent copy, suffering a bit from earlier "conservation."

Click either image for an enlargement.

Provenance: Pencilled note on endpaper, “From Ralph E. McCoy’s Library”; McCoy, emeritus Dean of Libraries at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, published widely on the First Amendment freedoms.

•  Howes C336; Sabin 12379; Shaw & Shoemaker 17193. Later quarter plain brown paper over contemporary tan paper–covered sides; edges and corners rubbed. Front free endpaper (modern) with pencilled note of McCoy’s ownership; front fly-leaf with pencilled gift inscription dated 1849. Offsetting and foxing throughout. A very sound copy.

Rare in commerce: No copy has appeared at auction in more than fifty years. The fact that it was printed on the portable press of Bolívar’s Army of Liberation, and in the small town of Cúcuta on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, adds to its rarity.

•  Not in Palau. Late 19th- or early 20th-century cloth over paste boards; binding shows wear and some insect damage. Front free endpaper with institutional rubber stamp. Text with occasional light foxing. Withal, a very good copy of a book that is now nearly impossible to find in any condition.

Click the images for enlargements.

There were two editions in 1853, the other being 24 pages in length.

•  Palau 59737. Original printed yellow wrappers, creased and a little dusty. Very good condition.

First edition.

•  Sabin 19890; Dumond 63. Sewn, in original printed wrappers, slightly chipped. Five-digit number stamped on front wrapper, and a neat paper label at upper left corner. A very nice copy.

Binding: Contemporary half calf over marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges tooled in blind; spine gilt extra with floral decorations and gilt-ruled bands, with gilt-stamped leather title-label. All edges saffron.

Provenance: Front pastedown with bookplates of I.W. Roberts and Robert E. Steiner, both of Montgomery, Alabama.

•  Bound as above, covers and edges moderately rubbed. Two pages with offsetting from a now-absent laid-in item; a few leaves with small spots of foxing. One signature separated and protruding a tad.

Click the image for an enlargement.

An important negative statement of civil liberties and religious freedom.

•  ESTC R21099; Wing (rev.) E862.   Removed from a nonce volume; dusty, in modern wrappers. Sidenotes closely trimmed with loss of letters and even a short words.  (20451)

A search of RLIN, OCLC, NSTC, and NUC Pre-1956 shows only four U.S. holdings of this pamphlet.

•  NSTC 2N1853. Recent moiré cloth–covered boards. Title-page with small inked numerals in upper outer corner. One leaf with short edge tear just touching text.

•  ESTCT66856.   Recent full brown specked calf, cover gilt-tooled in the Cambridge style. Raised bands on spine accented with gilt beading on bands and defined by gilt rules above and below each band. A nice clean copy. (21733)

•  ESTC T102145; Sabin 59081. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Original sewing holes visible in inner margins; some leaves lightly foxed, with final page darkened.

Uncommon: Only three U.S. institutions report holdings.

•  ESTC T3154.   Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Lacking the half-title. Pages lightly age-toned. (21078)

•  ESTC N46161. Marbled paper–covered boards, old-style, front cover with printed paper label. Pages skillfully reinforced at inner margins; clean throughout.

Copies of the Indexes that can be proved to have been used in colonial Mexico are virtually unknown. This is the first such pairing of 16th-century printings that we have seen in our 30 years of dealing in colonial Mexicana.

Provenance: Marca de fuego on top and bottom edges of the Convento of San Antonio Sultepec; later in the library of Santa Barbara of Puebla according to a 17th-century notation on the title-page of the first work (“Es de Sta. Barbara de la Puebla, por n[uest]ro her[man]o fr[ay] Juan de Santa Ana, g[uardi]an”).

•  Aed.I: Palau 118926 Aed. II: 118927 & 118928. Contemporary limp and cockled vellum, a little shrunken and with remnants of ties. Lower margins sometime exposed to water and with arrested mildew damage, causing loss of paper that has been repaired in heavy-handed fashion. Good copies, but not very good ones, of these remarkable survivors!

Among the publications banned in their entirety are two “papeles” in Basque: Conferencia spirituala çoint an ikhusten baita francianco Nationeax eliça guiçonen againean eguin duen Constitutione Civlia, and Erresumaco juramentuya populujaren adiskide batez, escualduner esplicatuya. These constitute the first instance this cataloguer has personally seen of the Mexican Inquisition banning publications in Basque (DMS).

Handsomely printed in roman type, single-column format at top and bottom and double-column format in the middle. With the embossed paper and wax seal of the Inquisition present, in the lower left corner. Signed with paraphs by four Inquisitors: Drs. Juan de Mier y Villar, Antonio Bergosa y Jordan, Bernardo de Prado y Obejero, and José de Pereda y Chaves.

Rare: Not in the standard bibliographies and OCLC locates only the copy at the Bancroft.

•  Not in Medina, Mexico; not in González de Cossío, Cien; not in González de Cossío, 510.   Very good condition, very small piece of blank paper torn from lower margin. Old folds.  (23379)

Click the image for an enlargement.

Printed in double-column format. Signed with paraphs by the three inquisitors and with the Inquisition's woodcut seal in the lower left corner. Also bearing the admonition: “Nadie le quite pena de Excomunion mayor” (“Let no one take this down [from where it is posted], under penalty of complete Excommunicaton.')

Rare.  We locate only the copy at Texas A&M.

•  Not in Medina, Mexico; not in González de Cossío, Cien or 510; not in Lathrop Harper.   Very Good condition.  (21772)

For more INQUISITION material,  click here.

Las Casas, the first great historian of the New World, arrived in Cuba in 1502 and spent most of the ensuing years in the Caribbean and Mexico until his return to Spain in 1547, so his arguments are based on personal observation and not on Aristotelian theory, as were Sepúlveda’s. He had witnessed first hand the destruction of the American Indian population via the diseases the Spaniards brought with them and through mistreatment and war, things he continually fought against as a priest. After his return to Spain and throughout his old age, he launched a series of attacks on Spanish policy. He engineered the publication of his arguments against Sepúlveda in a series of nine tracts printed in Seville in 1552 and 1553. The first, and most famous, of these tracts was the Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias, which describes the numerous wrongs inflicted upon the Indians, mainly in the Antilles.

This is first edition of Bartolomé de las Casas's third tract advocating the better treatment of Amerindians by the Spanish. In it he offers 20 detailed suggestions for the better treatment of the natives, including such basics as that they should be secure in their homes. He also flat out calls for the end of the encomienda system and for the placing of all Indians under the direct protection of the crown. All of the tracts are of great significance, both for their immediate effect in reforming the Spanish colonial system to some degree, and as an extremely early example of European concern with the human rights of native people.

The text is printed in gothic (i.e., “black letter”) as was the custom for “legal” and religious texts. The title-page is printed in red and black, with the text surrounded by a four-panel woodcut border.

Evidence of readership: A half dozen contemporary annotations and textual corrections.

•  Alden & Landis, European Americana, 552/9; Sabin 11229; Medina, BHA, 146. Church 89; JCB (3), I, 169; Index Aurel. 132.872; Palau 46942. Full modern deep claret-colored morocco. Round spine with raised bands, each of which is accented above and below by gilt beading. Gilt center devices in blank spine compartments, others with author and title information in gilt lettering. Covers tooled in gilt with rules and rolls forming concentric panels. Gilt corner devices. Marbled endpapers. Minor instances of soiling on title-page, two areas of verso of title-page reinforced. Minor age-toning and soiling, top portion of a few leaves brown-stained. Lower corners of leaves c8 & f4 lacking, restored; nine letters supplied in manuscript facsimile on c8 and four on f4. Lacks final blank leaf. A good copy, untattered.

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Evans 16773; Hildeburn, The Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, 1685–1784, 4006. Five-digit number stamped above the title; pp. 1 and 2 separated from 3 and 4, and gutter margin repaired, reattaching the halves. Semicircular tear in lower, inside area of all pages, costing a total of 9 or 10 words.

His concerns here are the use of jail to silence liberal pens, the failure of the Spanish government to give equal status to “americanos,” and the need for Independence to succeed, especially via the Army of the Three Guarantees.

The only copies in the U.S. that we’ve located are at the Sutro and Bancroft libraries.

• Not in Medina, Mexico. Sutro 254; Garritz 4779. Folded as issued, edges chipped; woming in lower margins, old stitching holes, some leaves loose. Light soiling. A decent copy; a survivor.

•  Not in Medina, Mexico; not in Sutro. Grajales 1623. Removed from a nonce volume and irregular in left margin. Revenue stamps on the verso. Venegas’s manuscript paraph (rúbrica) appended to his name in type.

Not the least of his accomplishments was the creation of two pueblo-hospitals for native Americans, and appended and integral to this biography are his “Reglas, y ordenanzas para el gobierno de los Hospitales de Santa Fé de México, y Michoacàn,” which occupy the final 29 pages.

Historians still consider this to be the definitive biography of Quiroga. The engraved portrait of him, handsome and from the burin of José Morales, adds a face to the words of the biographer and to the account of the deeds of the biographee.

•  Medina, Mexico, 5099; Wellcome, Medical Americana, M.134; Palau 181902; Beristain, III, 2059.   Contemporary limp vellum lacking ties. A very good copy.  (23061)

•  Part I: Evans 27458; ESTC W31697. Part II: Evans 30941; ESTC W31705.   Recent full calf, period style. Old library stamp on first title-page. A very nice set of both parts.  (20627)

Despite this strongly worded treatise against persecution (which argues that all men should be able to make a free and open choice of faith and worship), the statutes remained in place for many years to come.

•  Wing (rev.) P1298A; ESTC R12742. Recent marbled paper–covered boards. Title-page with tiny, unobtrusive numeral inked in upper outer corner, first text page with numeral stamped in lower margin (no other markings). Title-page and first text page with moderate foxing, others clean.

Many institutions report microform holdings, but very few hold actual copies.

•  Sabin 59986; Shaw & Shoemaker 1114. Contemporary-style quarter tan cloth over blue paper-covered sides, spine with printed paper label. Paper embrittled and somewhat fragile; pages age-toned and foxed.

Click the images for enlargements.

The three color plates are facsimiles of post-Conquest pictorial codices; and the fourth plate is a lithograph portrait of Alvarado with a facsimile of his signature.

Provenance:  Owner's stamp on title-page of Alfredo Chavero; later owned by Charles Minot; given by him in 1886 to Harvard College; in 20th century deaccessioned.

•  Sabin 67646.   Contemporary Mexican quarter black calf, gilt spine extra, dry and worn at spine; top of spine pulled with one inch of leather gone. Interior clean and good with ownership marks as above.  (21531)

Uncommon: No U.S. copy of this issue located via OCLC and ESTC locates only the Harvard copy. There were other, less complete editions of 40 pp., 58 pp., and 78 pp.

•  ESTC N15187.   Recent full calf, period style; spine with raised bands accented in gilt, oxblood leather gilt-lettered title, publication date and place in gilt at base; covers framed and paneled in gilt rules with gilt-stamped corner fleurons. Shallow chip to top outer corners of final two leaves. One word on p. 32 is blotted out in ink by an early owner with the correction supplied above it. Penned signature (partly cropped) at top edge of p. 79. Pp. 79–92 duplicated, nothing missing.  (23766)

Uncommon: OCLC locates only the copies at the Bancroft and Chilean National libraries; although, clearly, there is or was one in the Sutro Library.

•  Sutro 175.   Removed from a nonce volume. A good clean copy.  (21742)

Click the image to the right
for an enlargement.

While Ferdinand VII remained the prisoner of Napoleon, the Regency promulgated several important human rights acts, and this was one of the most important. The Regency ratified and published it 29 January and on 31 January it was ordered distributed throughout the empire.

•  Not in Medina, Mexico; not in Garritz, Impresos novohispanos; not in Sutro. Folds from having been previously bound into a small folio volume. Left margin irregular from removal from that volume. Revenue stamps on the verso. Viceroy Venegas’s paraph (“rúbrica”) below his printed name. A very good copy.

•  Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 1612. Not in Medina, Mexico; not in Sutro. Folds from having been previously bound into a small folio volume. Left margin irregular from removal from that volume. Revenue stamps on the verso. Viceroy Venegas’s paraph (“rúbrica”) below his printed name. A very good copy.

At the heart of the controversy was Duane’s support of Jefferson for president and his exposure of the notorious Ross election bill by which the Federalists sought to thwart Jefferson’s bid for that office.

•  Evans 38856; ESTC W021879. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean and in nice condition.

Williams, a Welsh philosopher, was a founder of the Royal Literary Fund and a close friend of Oliver Goldsmith.

These collected translations are fairly widely held institutionally, but seldom seen on the market.

•  ESTC T51661; Lowndes 2792; Allibone 2736.   Recent period-style mottled calf, framed and panelled with gilt rules and gilt-stamped corner fleurons, panelling in contrasting calf, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, raised spine bands set off by gilt double fillets. Frontispiece portrait lacking. Light foxing; one leaf with tear from lower margin, extending into five lines of text.  (23537)

This Boston edition most likely appeared shortly after the Philadelphia edition printed in the same year; among the prominent American women’s rights activists known to have read and been influenced by the Vindication are Judith Sargent Murray, Abigail Adams, and (later) Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

•  Evans 25054; ESTC W2450; PMM 242 (for first ed.); Windle, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, A5d. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered boards, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and gilt-stamped devices between raised bands. Half-title mounted; a few leaves with old repairs to lower inner margins. Pages age-toned, with offsetting, staining, and spotting.