Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), known as El Inca, was a chronicler and writer born in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Sailing to Spain at 21, he was educated informally there, where he lived and worked the rest of his life. The natural son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman born in the early years of the conquest, he is known primarily for his chronicles of Inca history, culture, and society. His work was widely read in Europe, influential and well received. It was the first literature by an author born in the Americas to enter the western canon.

While in Spain, Garcilaso wrote his best-known work, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, published in Lisbon in 1609. It was based mostly on stories and oral histories told him by his Inca relatives when he was a child in Cusco, but also on the remnants of the history by Blas Valera which was mostly destroyed in the sacking of Cadiz in 1596. The Comentarios have two sections and volumes. The first was primarily about Inca life. The second, about the conquest of Peru, was published in 1617. It was first published in English as an abridged version in 1685, translated by Sir Paul Rycaut and titled The Royal Commentaries of Peru. More than a century and a half after its initial publication, in the 1780s, as the uprising against colonial oppression led by Tupac Amaru II was gaining momentum, Charles III of Spain banned the Comentarios from being published in the Quechua language in Lima or distributed there on account of its "dangerous" content. This work is translated directly from the 1609 edition.

First complete English edition, Hakluyt Society First Series, XLI, XLV; 2 volumes, 8vos (22.5 x 15 cm); 1 folding coloured map, ex libris Inner Temple Library with bookplates and stamps, withdrawn stamp to titles, small marginal tear to vol. I title internally tight and clean; original publisher's gilt blue cloth, slight dampstaining to boards, spines darkened with heads slightly chipped, a few gathering hinges cracked but firm, internally a very good set; [6], xvi, 359; [6], 553pp.