In mid-2012, during partial work of raising old and rare scientific books in Municipal Library of Porto heritage collections, I came upon a copy2 - shelfmark U-12-8 - of the work which began Oviedo’s career as a chronicler of the West Indies. At the time I retained in memory the beautiful architectural frontispiece of De la natural Historia de las Indias and an elegant handwritten signature inside the roundel (Fig. 1); later, I have made several readings and research of which I give here a summary note3. I am now able to affirm that this copy has an unambiguous handwritten signature of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. I compared this signature, which appears inside the heraldic medallion at the bottom of the title page, with another author’s signature on an autograph manuscript preserved in the Royal Library of San Lorenzo of the Escorial (Fig. 2). In both documents the signatures are very similar4. Let’s look at the evidence from these collated primary sources:

We do not know how this book signed by Oviedo ended into the hands of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), proprietary of one of the largest libraries in Europe of his time (Does the book travelled directly to Great Britain? Does it crossed France or other European countries?), but we know that Sloane owned two copies of Oviedo´s De la natural Historia de las Indias (Toledo, 1526). Both copies - BPMP U-12-8 and BL C.63.k.7.(1.) - have inscribed alphanumeric marks, the most common form used by Sloane to number and categorize his books, but only one of them (shelfmark BPMP) bears Oviedo’s handwritten signature. This copy here under analysis has Sloane number A 583 (Fig. 3). It should be noted that another work by Oviedo, a French edition of L’histoire Naturelle Et Generale Des Indes… (Paris, 1556), currently in the British Library (BL 601.m.15.), is probably from Sloane’s collection5.

After Sloane’s dead his collection of books (including those above mentioned) and manuscripts formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum Library, later British Library. In this context, the printed titles were stamped with the distinctive British Museum ownership mark, the octagonal ‘Museum Britannicum’ black stamp. The British Museum held several sales of duplicate items. Our Summary’s copy was registered as duplicate and stamped ‘British Museum Sale Duplicate 1787’ (Fig. 3).

The auction, promoted by Leigh and Sotheby, took place in March 1788 and the book was bought by “Pinto”, i.e., Luís Pinto de Sousa Coutinho (1735-1804), Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Portugal in London, later 1st Viscount of Balsemão6. This bibliophile returned to Portugal with the books which, after his death, were inherited by his son, Luís Máximo Alfredo Pinto de Sousa Coutinho (1774-1832), 2nd Viscount of Balsemão.

During the Portuguese Civil War, also known as Liberal Wars or War of the Two Brothers (1828-1834), the remarkable library of the Viscounts of Balsemão7, supporters of the absolutist party, was kidnapped by the victorious liberals, inventoried and incorporated (in a dispersed way) into the newly established (1833) Oporto Royal Public Library, nowadays Municipal Library of Porto, Portugal. Oviedo’s De la natural Historia de las Indias reference in the auction catalog matches the one in the ‘inventory’ of Balsemão library (Fig. 4).

After circulating among aristocratic owners and travelling through private and public libraries, at least across three European countries – Spain, United Kingdom and Portugal – this copy of Oviedo’s Summary, an example of book circulation and knowledge transmission (Fig. 5), lies in the Municipal Library of Porto waiting to be rediscovered by researchers and readers.