Zelia Nuttall
Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, 1901.

Presentation copy from one of the great women of science to her mother, inscribed on the front free endpaper: “To my dear Mother from her loving daughter. Zelia. April 1901.” Subsequently rebound in Florence at her mother’s instruction and returned to Nuttall after her mother’s death, with a second autograph note in her hand: “My dear mother had this copy bound in Florence, and it came to me after her death. Z. Nuttall.” Also with Zelia Nuttall’s engraved bookplate to the verso of the front free endpaper. Zelia’s mother, Magdalena Parrott Nuttall, gave her a copy of Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico in childhood, a gift frequently cited as the origin of her lifelong engagement with pre-Columbian Mexico. The Fundamental Principles was Nuttall’s most substantial comparative study, arguing cultural parallels between ancient Mediterranean and Mesoamerican civilisations and advancing the controversial hypothesis of transoceanic contact, including possible Phoenician influence. The Florentine binding carries a further association: while working in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence in 1890, Nuttall identified the manuscript later published as The Book of the Life of the Ancient Mexicans, her edition and study of the Codex Magliabecchiano. A singular association copy, the author’s presentation to the mother who set her on her scholarly path, in a binding from the city where she made one of her most important manuscript discoveries.