Historia Verdadera de La Conquista de La Nueva Espana

Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1584) was a foot soldier in the army of Mexico''s conqueror Hernán Cortés. The first edition of his True History of the Conquest of New Spain (as it was entitled in a later English translation) was published in Madrid in 1632 from a manuscript copy sent to Spain shortly after the author''s death. Written in a highly accessible style and describing the experiences of the troops themselves the work became even more successful than the official accounts and went through many editions and translations. The two-volume edition reissued here was first published in 1904 and is considered a more reliable text as it was based on the original manuscript preserved in Guatemala City. Volume 1 contains an introduction by the editor the influential Mexican historian and book-collector Genaro García (1867–1920) a table of variant readings and chapters 1–139 of the text.