Esta antología no pretende ser una recopilación científica o exhaustiva. Ha sido redactado con la aspiración de divulgar la riqueza de las esenciales leyendas, mitos, historias y cuentos de Chile. El libro recoge más de 125 de las más conocidas narraciones, mitos y leyendas que se han pasado oralmente de generación en generación y forman parte de la memoria popular chilena. Refleja así las creencias, costumbres y experiencias del pueblo chileno antes y después de la conquista española.

"The one source that sets reference collections on Latin American studies apart from all other geographic areas of the world.... The Handbook has provided scholars interested in Latin America with a bibliographical source of a quality unavailable to scholars in most other branches of area studies." —Latin American Research Review Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 130 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and research under way in specialized areas. The Handbook of Latin American Studies is the oldest continuing reference work in the field. Lawrence Boudon, of the Library of Congress Hispanic Division, has been the editor since 2000, and Katherine D. McCann has been assistant editor since 1999. The subject categories for Volume 60 are as follows: Art History (including ethnohistory) Literature (including translations from the Spanish and Portuguese) Music Philosophy: Latin American Thought