Outline of the Revolution in Spanish America;: Or an Account of the Origin, Progress, and Actual State of the War Carried on Between Spain and Spanish America; Containing the Principal Facts Which Have Marked the Struggle.

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme, and Brown,, 1817. First edition of this scarce work outlining the "origin, progress and actual state" of the Spanish American wars of independence. Listed on the title page as an anonymous "South-American", the author is Manuel Palacio Fajardo (1784-1819), Venezuelan patriot, congress member, and advocate for independence. Fajardo became a representative to the first Constituent Congress of Venezuela in 1810 after the independence war broke out. He then went into exile after the fall of the First Republic in 1812, first in the United States before travelling to France and then Britain. He returned to the Venezuelan Congress, reestablished by Simon Bolivar in 1819, and made final revisions to Bolivar's inauguration speech. This work begins with an introduction on the territorial divisions of Spanish America, then describes the revolutions that occurred in the different countries, of which Venezuela was the first to declare independence against Spanish colonial power. This work was reissued in New York later the same year; a French and German version came out respectively in 1817 and 1818. Interestingly, the Spanish translation only appeared in 1953, in Caracas. Octavo (212 x 127 mm). Contemporary half calf, paper-covered grey boards, flat spine with elaborate gilt and blind tooling in compartments, blind stamped decoration to covers, Gloster pattern marbled endpapers, blue silk bookmarker. Armorial bookplate of Henry Edward Harcourt Rice (1864-1844) to front pastedown. Binding sharp with very little rubbing to extremities, short superficial cracks to joints and front hinge but firm, a little loss at tail of front joint, a few light spots to initial and final leaves, browning to gutter of two leaves from bookmarker, otherwise internally bright and clean, bound without half-title. A very good copy. For the publication history of this work, see L. Bastin, "Francisco de Miranda, intercultural forerunner" in Agents of Translation, 2009, p. 33.