Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada)

The true first edition is the 1924 Spanish Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Editorial Nascimento, Santiago, June 1924). A precedence trap: Neruda later revised the text for a subsequent Nascimento edition in 1932 (often called the "definitive" edition), altering wording in several poems, so the 1924 Nascimento printing is the only true first-issue text — later Nascimento printings carry the revised version. The first English-language edition is Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, translated by poet W. S. Merwin, published by Jonathan Cape (London) in 1969 as a bilingual (Spanish recto / English verso) volume, issued simultaneously in wrappers (white wrappers in a pink printed dust jacket) and in hardcover; the first U.S. edition followed the same year, 1969, from Grossman Publishers (New York).