Quoted from Cundall's "History of Printing in Jamaica - From 1717 to 1834" published in 1935 by The Institute of Jamaica.

"In the latter part of the seventeenth century, after the ownership of Jamaica had been settled by the treaty of Madrid, there were a number of Jews resident in Jamaica, who from the time of Sir Thomas Lynch had their freedom of religious worship. The most noted and respected of these Jews at this time was the Spanish poet Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna, although, strangely enough, no reference has hitherto been made to him in Jamaica histories. Born about the middle of the seventeenth century of parents who were Maranos of southern France, he studied classics in Spain in his youth. For several years he suffered imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition whnce he managed to escape. He fled to Jamaica and then openly confessed his Jewish faith for which he had suffered mny tortures. Here he put into song the holy poems of the Psalms of David which had sustained him in his terrible suffering.

This work, < one of the most remarkable products of Jewish Spanish literature >, was the product of twenty-three years labour in Jamaica at the time when the other inhabitants were engaged in politics, planting, trade or commerce. Another twenty-three years elapsed before it was issued from the press. This would roughly make Laguna's residence in Jamaica extend somewhere between the years 1674 and 1719.

The following is the wording of the title-page of this rare quarto work;

< Espejo Fiel de Vidas que Contiene Los en Verso, Psalmos de David, Obra Devota, Vtil, y Deleytable. En Londres con Licencia de los Sonoros del Mahamad, y aprovasion del Senor Haham. Ano 5480 (1720).>

It was the earliest book printed by a resident of Jamaica under British rule. It has a vignette on the title-page, a curios geroglifico and other plates engraved by Abraham Lopes de Oliviera."