Jul 15, 2021 - Sale 2576

Sale 2576 - Lot 23

Price Realized: $ 81,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
Fama, y Obras Posthumas del Fenix de Mexico, Decima Musa, Poetisa Americana.

Madrid: Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1700.

Quarto, first edition of the third part of the poet's works (each published separately: part one in Madrid, 1689 and part two in Seville, 1691); title page printed in red and black, engraved author portrait after Clemente Puche (1699-1728) bound after the title, in it Sor Juana is depicted at the center of an architectural border with quill and book in hand, flanked by personifications of Europe and America, with the arms of the soon-to-be-exiled Queen of Spain, Maria Anna of Neuburg and Giovanna Pignatelli d'Aragona (1666-1723), 7th Marquesa of the Valley of Oaxaca, heir to the conquistador Hernán Cortés at top and bottom; some scratches to title, contents generally crisp, disbound, inserted in the limp parchment binding of another book of the same period, a.e.g., 8 x 5 3/4 in.

The first 142 unnumbered pages in this posthumous work consist of laudatory verse and letters in praise of de la Cruz's work and life by contemporary admirers and colleagues, male and female. This is followed by the first edition in print of de la Cruz's Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, in which she argues in defense of a woman's right to study secular and religious texts.

European Americana 700/149; Medina BHA III:2013; Palau 65226; Sabin 36814; rare at auction.