CERVANTES, Miguel De.

Don Quixote de la Mancha.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water": The Nonesuch Press Edition of Cervantes' Masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha; With illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffer

London: The Nonesuch Press, 1930.

$975.00

Out of Stock Item Number: RRB-148783

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The Nonesuch Press limited edition of Cervantes' masterpiece. Octavo, two volumes, bound in full russet morocco with gilt titles to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, top edges gilt, frontispieces, with 21 color illustrations. One of 1475 numbered copies, this is number 704. In near fine condition. Translated from the Spanish by Peter Motteux in 1743. Corrected, rectified, and filled up in numberless places by J. Ozell with explanatory notes from the best editions in English and Spanish. Illustrated by famous graphic designer E. McKnight Kauffer, who designed the dust jacket art for Ralph Ellison's novel 'Invisible Man.' Ownership inscription to the front free endpaper and second free endpaper of volume one.

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."