Cervantès - Don Quichotte de la Manche - 1893

CERVANTES (Miguel de). Don Quichotte de la Manche. Limoges, Marc Barbou, 1893. One large-in-8 volume, 312 pp., publisher’s polychrome boards illustrated, with gilt edges. Illustrated edition.

The copy belongs to the broad-diffusion industrial production characteristic of the 1880s–1890s: ordinary paper printing, now slightly browning throughout the quires, bindings somewhat fragile to handle with care. The text is accompanied by 44 compositions by Bressier, distributed as illustrations within the text and as full-page plates; they illustrate the most famous episodes of the novel in a narrative, popular style in keeping with the commercial illustration conventions of the period.

The bibliophilic interest of this copy lies above all in the publisher’s polychrome binding, a remarkable piece of industrial chromolithography: the top cover showcases a rich, multi-registered composition — a polar scene with white bears and ships caught in the ice, a tropical jungle populated by a tiger and a crocodile, monkeys climbing bamboo, a knightly jousting scene in a medallion on a gold ground, and at the center, Don Quixote himself in his armchair, brandishing his sword amid his chivalry books. The back, similarly crafted, is adorned with an exotic riding figure and gilded vegetal motifs on a bright red background.

¶ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), wounded at Lepanto, captive for five years in Algiers, commissary of provisions for the Invincible Armada, publishes the first part of Don Quixote in Madrid in 1605, the second in 1615 — a few months before his death. A landmark work of the European novel, the text became soon after the seventeenth century translated into all languages and, in the following centuries, a substantial publishing production, from scholarly editions to popular bookstore editions. Barbou of Limoges, heir to a distinguished lineage of printers active since the sixteenth century, steered its activities in the nineteenth century toward illustrated editions aimed at a family and school audience.