BESTIARY = BESTIARIO : a poem by Pablo Neruda; Elsa Neuberger, translator - 1965

New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. First Edition. 1/4 cloth. Fine/near fine. Antonio Frasconi. A near fine, signed first edition in a very good plus slipcase. Amazing woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi, including the signed frontis. The frontispiece has been printed from the original blocks on Goyu handmade paper. Number 210 of only 300 copies published. Also signed by the printer, Blumenthal, on the colophon. Orange quarter cloth over decorative woodcut paper boards. Top front corner is badly bumped. Absolutely no markings, binding is sturdy and square. Slipcase has only one flaw: a very short crack along the rear seam at the base. Unpaginated. 8 & 1/2 x 11 & 3/4 inches tall, quarto. Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name, Pablo Neruda, was a Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet-diplomat and politician. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.