Primera y segunda parte de el Leon de España.

VEZILLA [or Vecilla] CASTELLANOS, Pedro de la.

Published by Salamanca, En Casa de Juan Fernandez, 1586.

8°, modern stiff vellum, nicely executed with yapped edges and spine with raised bands in three compartments, title lettered in manuscript in second compartment, place and date at foot, all text block edges rouged. Second part with divisional title page (l. 198). Both title pages with armorial woodcut depicting a rampant lion. Woodcut initials. Small skillful repair to upper blank margin of title page. Occasional small, light waterstains. Overall in good to very good condition. Bookplate of Kenneth Rapoport. Small octagonal purple stamp "Biblioteca // José Morán" and purple stamped signature of Elena Marán de Guillen in lower portion of fourth front free endleaf recto. Two-line contemporary ink manuscript signature of the author on title page verso [also present in the Salvá-Heredia copy]. (14), 369, (6, 1 blank) ll. +8, ++6, A-Aaa8. *** FIRST and ONLY early EDITION. A facsimile edition was issued by the Diputación Provincial of León in 1982.This is one of the books which Cervantes featured in the library of Don Quijote and which was to be consigned to the flames without being inspected by the priest: "Called away by this noise and uproar [the priest and the barber] went no further with the scrutinising of those books that remained; and so it is believed the La Carolea and the León of Spain went to the fire unseen and unheard, along with The Deeds of the Emperor as set down by Don Luis de Avila, for these must undoubtedly have been among the works that were left, and possibly if the priest had seen them he would not have passed so severe a sentence upon them." (Don Quixote, Part I, chpter 7, trans. Putnam).Ticknor gives a good account of the book: "In the neighbourhood of the city of Leon there are - or in the sixteenth century there were - three imperfect Roman inscriptions cut into the living rock; two of them referring to Curienus, a Spaniard, who had successfully resisted the Imperial armies in the reign of Domitian, and the third to Polma, a lady, whose marriage to her love, Canioseco, is thus singularly recorded. On these inscriptions, Vezilla Castellanos, a native of the territory where the persons they commemorate are supposed to have lived, has constructed a romantic poem, in twenty-nine cantos, called 'Leon in Spain', which he published in 1586.?"Its main subject, however, in the last fifteen cantos, is the tribute of a hundred damsels, which the usurper Mauregato covenanted by treaty to pay annually to the Moors, and which, by the assistance of the apostle Saint James, King Ramiro successfully refused to pay any longer. Castellanos, therefore, passes lightly over the long period intervening between the time of Domitian and that of the war of Pelayo, giving only a few sketches from its Christian history, and then, in the twenty-ninth canto, brings to a conclusion so much of his poem as relates to the Moorish tribute, without, however, reaching the ultimate limit he had originally proposed to himself. But it is long enough. Some parts of the Roman fiction are pleasing, but the rest of the poem shows that Castellanos is only what he calls himself in the Preface - 'a modest poetical historian, or historical poet; an imitator and apprentice of those who have employed poetry to record such memorable things as kindle the minds of men and raise them to a Christian and devout reverence for the saints, to an honourable exercise of arms, to the defense of God's holy law, and to the loyal service of the king'. If his poem have any subject, it is the history of the city of Leon."-Ticknor.*** Ruiz Fidalgo, Salamanca 1198. Antonio, Nova, II, 8. Palau 354372. Simón Diaz, BLH, IX, 54, n.º 437; XI, n.º 1513. Salvá 1052: ". los ejemplares son raros y casi nunca se encuentran en buen estado." Heredia 2127. Gallardo, Ensayo 4198. Vindel 3157. British Library, Pre-1601 Spanish STC, p. 215. Jerez p. 109. HSA p. 595 (the Jerez copy). Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, II, 494-5. Not in Garcia Peres, Catálogo razonado biográfico y bibl. Seller Inventory # 44011

Bibliographic Details

Title: Primera y segunda parte de el Leon de España.
Publisher: Salamanca, En Casa de Juan Fernandez, 1586.
Edition: 1st Edition