Alturas de Macchu Picchu.; Ilustraciones de José Venturelli

Santiago de Chile: Ediciones de Libreria Neira, 1948. First edition. The first edition of Neruda's masterpiece, later incorporated into Canto General. One of 500 copies numbered in Arabic, an additional 20 numbered in Roman were not for sale. Folio, 25 x 38 cm. 48 pages, 7 full page woodcuts by José Venturelli. Neruda first visited Machu Picchu in 1943, however he did not begin writing the poem until 1945. The French writer Roger Caillois visited him while he was composing it, and began to publish his translations in January, 1946, but the first partial publication in Spanish did not occur until July 1946. This first edition in book form was published by a Santiago bookstore, a courageous effort at a time when Neruda was in hiding from the police in a friend's basement. Original wrappers, a little tanned and with some small areas of paper restoration to the edges; a very good copy of a book scarce in commerce. Becco 84; Loyola 292 (misdated as 1947).