NERUDA (PABLO) Estravagario, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO ALAN PRYCE-JONES, INSCRIBED AT LENGTH on the front free endpaper ("To Alan Pryce Jones, we are always remembering your visit to Isla Negra. Perhaps we'll meet again? But visa is refused to me for England. Why? History!/ Now this presents you my new book and a young and brilliant writer: Jaime Valdivieso. I hope you will be a good friend to him. Happy muchacho who can have a visa from your great country. Yours, Pablo Neruda"), illustrations (some full-page), entirely unopened in publisher's wrappers, slight wear and nicks at edges, red cloth solander box, 8vo, Buenos Aires, Losada, 1958 'VISA IS REFUSED TO ME FOR ENGLAND. WHY? HISTORY!' - The disappointed Neruda sends Pryce-Jones a copy of his latest book by way of the young writer Jaime Valdivieso: "Happy muchacho who can have a visa from your great country". In addition to his work for the TLS, and playing a role in the development of the BBC's Third programme, Alan Pryce-Jones also travelled widely for the British Council in the 1950s, lecturing and fostering literary connections: "I still remember... spending an evening with Neruda at Isla Negra in Chile, dodging a bullet on the steps of a Buenos Aires hotel at the moment of Peron's dethronement, addressing in Spanish (how rash!) the Ateneo in Seville, in German an audience of nuns in Munster, in Italian a Milanese university group" (Alan Pryce-Jones, The Bonus of Laughter, 1987). Jaime Valdivieso Bordalí (1929-2019) was a Chilean writer, poet and essayist who lived and taught in Chile, Cuba, the United States and Mexico (following his exile in 1973). A champion in later life of indigenous people and literature, he is probably best known for the novels La condena de todos ('The Condemnation of All', 1966) and Las máscaras del ruiseñor ('The Masks of the Nightingale', 1982). Provenance: Alan Pryce-Jones, inscription to him from the author; by descent to the present owner.