1936 Rare First Edition - The Gaucho Martin Fierro by José Hernández

Author: José Hernández. Adapted from the Spanish and rendered into English verse by Walter Owen. Illustrated by Alberto Guiraldes.
Title: The Gaucho Martin Fierro.
Publisher: New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1936. First American Edition.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 9 x 6 inches.
Pages: xxiv, 326 pages, including a substantial introduction by the translator.
Binding: Nar fine contemporary full blue polished calf binding, gilt-tooled, stamp-signed “Bound by Rivière & Son.” (the firm closed in 1939, making this one of their final bindings). Boards with gilt single-line borders, corner ornaments, and a magnificent gilt tree device to the upper cover. Spine with five raised bands, crisply tooled in gilt, with green morocco title label “MARTIN FIERRO” and a lighter secondary label for “HERNANDEZ.” All edges gilt. Binding in superb condition with scarcely any evidence of wear; spine ends unbumped and corners sharp, with only a very slight, typical bowing to the front and rear boards. Marbled pastedowns and free endpapers. Housed in a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Near fine internally. Text block firmly bound, pages crisp with only the most imperceptible, even age-toning. No page waviness noted. A pristine original glassine guard remains between the half-title and full title page.
Illustrations: Illustrated throughout with numerous line drawings by Alberto Guiraldes, including a full-page frontispiece and many in-text vignettes, all present and well preserved.

Estimate: (USD 650–750).

The book: The Gaucho Martin Fierro is the great national epic of Argentina, first published in Spanish in 1872 (The Departure) and completed in 1879 (The Return). This 1936 Farrar & Rinehart edition presents Walter Owen’s carefully crafted English verse translation, accompanied by Alberto Guiraldes’s elegant line drawings. Notably, this edition reproduces the text and illustrations of the earlier limited English edition of 450 copies printed at the Shakespeare Head Press (Stratford-upon-Avon) in 1935. The poem follows Martín Fierro, a proud and independent gaucho, as he is conscripted into frontier service, suffers injustice, rebels against authority, and ultimately becomes an exile on the pampas—an enduring meditation on freedom, dignity, and resistance.

The author: José Hernández (1834–1886) was an Argentine journalist, soldier, and politician whose Martín Fierro became one of the most widely read works in Spanish, running through innumerable editions and shaping Argentine national identity.

The illustrators: Alberto Guiraldes’s restrained, modernist line drawings capture the solitude and stoic dignity of gaucho life, complementing Owen’s translation with a visual language that is both spare and deeply evocative.