Books

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970. First American Edition. A superlative copy of the Nobel Prize winner's masterpiece, and likely the most widely-read Spanish language novel aside from 'Don Quixote.' The present example is a review copy, with the publisher's typed slip laid in; the slip differs from other Harper & Row review slips from the same period, in that in states "IMPORTANT: please note that this is UNCORRECTED PROOF." Also laid into this copy is a brief, one page typed letter from Harper & Row publisher Cass Canfield, Jr. to Dr. Howard B. Gotlieb, former Director of Special Collections at Boston University. The letter is dated 21 October, 1969 - some four months prior to publication of the book - and mentions the enclosure of an advance proof of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' It isn't lost on us that the copy these materials came to us in is not an uncorrected proof (of which we presently know of exactly 2 copies). We can only surmise that these proof materials…

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a landmark 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the town of Macondo, a fictitious town in the country of Colombia. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, and it is considered Márquez's magnum opus.

The true first edition was published by Editorial Sudamericana in 1967, in Spanish. It can be identified by the green and black cover with golden lettering and a stylized rooster. The presence of text 'Primera edición' and the lack of further impression or edition statements also indicate a first edition. The UK first edition was in 1970.