Overview

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519-1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America's oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solís de Merás's record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidíaz's text. In 2012, David Arbesú discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesú sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine's founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesú provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.

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9780813068428

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Reviews

A welcome addition to the published canon of La Florida primary sources. . . . This book succeeds resoundingly in its goal to offer this new manuscript copy of Solis de Meras to historians of Florida and the wider United States. - H-Florida A welcome contribution to sixteenth-century scholarship. . . . Offers an important perspective on a contested historical space. - Journal of Southern History

A welcome addition to the published canon of La Florida primary sources. . . . This book succeeds resoundingly in its goal to offer this new manuscript copy of Solis de Meras to historians of Florida and the wider United States. --H-Florida A welcome contribution to sixteenth-century scholarship. . . . Offers an important perspective on a contested historical space. --Journal of Southern History

Author Information

David Arbesú, assistant professor of Spanish at the University of South Florida, has edited various early modern and medieval Spanish texts, including the Fazienda de Ultramar and Flores y Blancaflor.

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