Books

Paris: Didot-Mayor, 1827. leather_bound. Full Cathedral blind stamped full calf, with central coat of arms and windmill device, spine slightly sunned. Aeg. Near fine. 615 pages. 12 x 8 cm. Half title, engraved title page, engraved portrait frontispiece, and numerous steel engraved plates with a double-paged engraved map after the text at rear. This rare miniature edition prompted by the publisher's desire to associate his name with that of Cervantes invented a new size in type that overcame the difficulty of miniaturization allowing the printing in one column instead of two. Book provenance of Domingo del Monte (1804-1853), Cuban literary critic and poet. Domingo del Monte y Aponte was the most important literary critic in nineteenth-century Cuba. A humanist and respectable poet in his own right, Del Monte was the initiator of Cuba's national literature. With his red leather gilt lettered bookplate, "Ex Museo Del Montino." Inscriptions of Domingo Guillermo de Arozarena (dated 23…

"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes is a seminal work in Western literature, often regarded as the first modern novel. Published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615, it tells the story of Alonso Quixano, a middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain. Obsessed with the chivalric romances of the Middle Ages, he loses his sanity and decides to become a knight-errant, renaming himself Don Quixote. He chooses a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, promising him the governorship of an island. The duo embarks on a series of adventures, with Don Quixote seeking to right wrongs and bring justice to the world, driven by his absurdly outdated moral code and understanding of reality. The novel is famous for its satirical examination of the discrepancy between Quixote's fantasy world and the actual world of 17th-century Spain. This theme is most famously illustrated in the episode where Don Quixote fights windmills, mistaking them for giant monsters. Throughout their journeys, the pair encounters thieves, prostitutes, a chain gang, and various other characters, often causing more harm than good in their attempts to help. "Don Quixote" explores themes of truth and justice, the transition from the old world to the new, and the idea of madness versus sanity. Cervantes employs a narrative structure that includes stories within stories, allowing him to critique the social and literary conventions of his time. The novel has had a profound influence on the development of prose fiction and is considered a precursor to the modern novel. It is celebrated for its humor, moral integrity, and its deep humanity, offering a complex reflection on the nature of reality and the importance of empathy.