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GONZÁLEZ HOLGUÍN, Diego (1560-1620). Gramatica y arte nueva dela lengua general de todo el Peru, Ilamada lengua Quichua, o lengua del Inca. Lima: Francisco del Canto, 1607.
4o (192 x 141 mm). (Some worming, occasionally affecting letters, some wormtracks repaired, some headlines shaved.) Early vellum over flexible boards (later endpapers).
FIRST EDITION OF THIS EXCEEDINGLY RARE AND IMPORTANT GRAMMAR OF QUECHUA: one of "the most extensive works on American aboriginal languages yet published" (Bartlett). Diego González Holguín arrived in Peru in 1581 as a member of a Jesuit mission, and then lived in different regions of the vice-royalty. He spent 45 years in various missions in Peru and Chile, and his Gramatica y arte nueva was the result of twenty-five years of studying popular spoken language in Cuzco and critically revising earlier studies on the subject like the Quechua vocabulary prepared by Fray Domingo de Santo Toms (Valladolid, 1560). Reprinted as late as 1901, it remains one of the best sources of information concerning the social and political organization of the Quechua. Pages 96-98 provide the Quechua terms for their kinship system, which is fundamental to Inca society.
The Gramatica was published by the second printer to work in Lima, Francisco del Canto (son of his namesake who was also a printer in Medina del Campo, Spain, from 1555), and the successor to the first printer of Peru, Antonio Ricardo. Del Canto continued to print until his death in 1623, and complained in his will about "the timidity of the land in the way of book buying." He despaired that much of his stock had become worm-damaged.
RARE: the only copy traceable at auction in the Twentieth Century is the Harmsworth copy, sold Sotheby's London in 1950. JCB (I) II:56; JCB (II) II.i:45; Leclerc 2402; Medina, Lima Imprints 38; Palau 105385; Sabin 32493; Vinaza Bibliografia Espanola de Lengua Indigenas de America 118.
4o (192 x 141 mm). (Some worming, occasionally affecting letters, some wormtracks repaired, some headlines shaved.) Early vellum over flexible boards (later endpapers).
FIRST EDITION OF THIS EXCEEDINGLY RARE AND IMPORTANT GRAMMAR OF QUECHUA: one of "the most extensive works on American aboriginal languages yet published" (Bartlett). Diego González Holguín arrived in Peru in 1581 as a member of a Jesuit mission, and then lived in different regions of the vice-royalty. He spent 45 years in various missions in Peru and Chile, and his Gramatica y arte nueva was the result of twenty-five years of studying popular spoken language in Cuzco and critically revising earlier studies on the subject like the Quechua vocabulary prepared by Fray Domingo de Santo Toms (Valladolid, 1560). Reprinted as late as 1901, it remains one of the best sources of information concerning the social and political organization of the Quechua. Pages 96-98 provide the Quechua terms for their kinship system, which is fundamental to Inca society.
The Gramatica was published by the second printer to work in Lima, Francisco del Canto (son of his namesake who was also a printer in Medina del Campo, Spain, from 1555), and the successor to the first printer of Peru, Antonio Ricardo. Del Canto continued to print until his death in 1623, and complained in his will about "the timidity of the land in the way of book buying." He despaired that much of his stock had become worm-damaged.
RARE: the only copy traceable at auction in the Twentieth Century is the Harmsworth copy, sold Sotheby's London in 1950. JCB (I) II:56; JCB (II) II.i:45; Leclerc 2402; Medina, Lima Imprints 38; Palau 105385; Sabin 32493; Vinaza Bibliografia Espanola de Lengua Indigenas de America 118.