CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, Miguel de.
The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote.
“THE TRUTH MAY BE STRETCHED THIN, BUT IT NEVER BREAKS, AND IT ALWAYS SURFACES ABOVE LIES, AS OIL FLOATS ON WATER”: First Edition Set of Cervantes' Masterpiece Don Quixote
Philadelphia: John Conrad & Co, 1803.
* Custom Clamshell Boxes are hand made by the Harcourt Bindery upon request and take approximately 60 days to complete
First American edition of Cervantes' masterpiece, translated from the original Spanish by Tobias Smollett. Duodecimo, 4 volumes, bound in full contemporary speckled calf, gilt numbers to the spine. Translated by T. Smollett. In good condition, lacking three of four spine labels, Japanese tissue repairs to the hinges of each volume, toning to the text block of each volume, bookplate to the front pastedown of each volume, loss to the crown of the spine of Vol. I, antiquarian ownership signature to the front pastedown of Vol. I and front free endpaper of Vol. II. Housed in a modern custom buckram case. A nice example of a first American edition of Don Quixote.
Don Quixote tells the tale of a man so entranced by reading about the chivalrous romantic ideals touted in books that he decides to take up his sword and become a knight-errant himself, with the aims of defending the helpless and warding off the wicked. With his somewhat confused laborer-turned-squire, Sancho Panza, they roam the world together and have adventures that have haunted reader's imaginations for nearly four hundred years. Don Quixote is generally recognized as the first modern novel. Over those years, it has had an incredible influence on thousands of writers, from Dickens to Faulkner, who once said he reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible". Vladimir Nabokov is quoted as saying, "Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes's womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality... He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon."
The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote.
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