Books

First edition, signed limited issue, number 221 of 300 subscribers' copies signed by Neruda and the artists Diego Rivera and David A. Siquerios, who illustrated the front and rear endpapers, respectively. It is complete with the dust jacket and original slipcase. Neruda's epic is "the first book of Spanish American poetry to have freed itself almost entirely from the European tradition" (Cohen, p. 223). Neruda begun his poetic re-imagining of his continent's legacy in 1938 and finished it while on the run from Chilean officials. The work grew with his travels: "It was as if the Canto general de Chile, as he called it at the time, was expanding geographically and spiritually, as his own experiences of Latin America deepened. It was becoming a song to the entire continent rather than to his homeland alone" (Feinstein, p. 156). The list of subscribers, which includes Pablo Picasso and "An American Youth for a Lasting Peace," is divided by country and shows an international audience spanning many nations in the Americas and Europe. The edition comprised 600 copies: 500 on Manila paper, of which 300 were issued signed for subscribers, 50 on Chateau paper, and 50 on Manila paper. Loosely inserted is a clipped newspaper report on transferring Neruda's remains from Santiago to Isla Negra, dated 1975, and a clipped obituary of the illustrator Siquerios, dated 1974. Quarto. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover with Neruda's familiar fish device, incorporating his surname in gilt, colour pictorial endpapers, top edge purple, other edges uncut, many leaves unopened, pink ribbon bookmarker. With dust jacket. Housed in the publisher's grey card slipcase with green label on front stamped with number 221. Printed in red and black, including large red initials opening each section. Text in Spanish. Ticket of Libreria Sarmiento on front free endpaper. Cloth bright, ends and corners bumped, book block slightly shaken but sound; jacket unclipped, repairs and reinforcement to recto and verso; soiling to slipcase, partial split to one joint, other joints repaired: still, a very good example. J. M. Cohen, Poetry of This Age, 1908-1958, 1960; Adam Feinstein, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, 2004.