America.- Columbus (Christopher) Epistola...de Insulis Indie supra Gangem nuper inventis, 8pp., finger soiling, slight worming, burn-hole affecting text especially on last 2 ff., 19th century marbled wrappers, 4to, (180 x 130mm.), anonymous facsimile reprint of the Rome, Plannck, after April 29th 1493 edition, [?19th century].

⁂ Facsimile of the second printing of Columbus' letter to his royal patrons giving his impressions of America.

Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage to the Americas in March 1493. His letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain was first published in Spanish in Barcelona in April of the same year (known only by the New York Public Library copy). The Latin edition, translated by Leander de Cosco from a different Spanish manuscript version and published shortly after the Barcelona edition, was responsible for spreading the news to the rest of Europe, given the international scope of the language. Plannck's first printing of this Latin translation ("Plannck I"; Goff-757) only names Ferdinand of Aragon in the title paragraph; this is the edition found in facsimile here. The second printing ("Plannck II"; Goff-758) addresses both Ferdinand and Isabella (of Castille).

Nothing definitive is yet known about who created this facsimile, when or where.