CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, Miguel de. Translated by Tobias Smollett.
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
London: A. Millar, 1775.
$3,200.00
Out of Stock
Item Number: RRB-148973
* Custom Clamshell Boxes are hand made by the Harcourt Bindery upon request and take approximately 60 days to complete
First British edition of Smollett's translation of Cervantes’ masterpiece, long considered one of the very best. Quarto, two volumes, bound in full contemporary speckled calf with gilt titles and numbers to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, double gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, frontispiece in volume one, illustrated with 28 full-paged copperplate engravings by Hayman. In good condition with rubbing and spines neatly rebacked. Translated from the original Spanish by Tobias Smollett. From the collection of Ken Rapoport with his bookplate to the front pastedowns.
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.
$3,200.00
Out of Stock