The History of Don Quixote. CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (Miguel de).

The text edited by J. W. CLark and a biographical notice of Cervantes by T. Teignmouth Shore.

Illustrated by Gustave Dore, complete with 118 full page wood-engraved plates including frontispiece and numerous vignettes within the text.

Folio. [320 x 255 x 60 mm]. [3]ff, xxviii, 737, [9] pp. Bound in half dark green morocco with marbled paper over boards, smooth spine divided into six panels by gilt double fillets, lettered in gilt in the second, third and fourth panels, laid colourful fiberous endleaves. (Binding in very good condition).

London: Cassell, Petter and Galpin, c.1870

Preliminary pages slightly toned and lightly creased, the odd foxing, small closed tear to pp. 513 with no loss to text, otherwise internally clean. Overall in very good condition.

Don Quixote was a text calculated to test even Dore. He was matching himself against Coypel and Tony Johannot among French artists, not to mention the Spanish illustrators of the great Ibarra edition published in Madrid in 1780. He met the challenge superbly. Dore visited Spain with his friend Baron Davillier in 1862 and produced many drawings which appeared in Davillier's L'Espagne of 1874, however, Cervantes' Don Quixote was simultaneously on his mind. At first he intended only forty designs, but Cervantes' book captured his imagination, and he arranged with Hachette for a major work in two folio volumes. By labouring night and day he and his engraver, Pisan, finished its 337 illustrations within a year' (Gordon N. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914, p. 337).

Stock no. ebc8935