THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA

Second edition with these illustrations by Issac Robert Cruikshank (misspelt Cruickshank on the engraved title pages). Two volumes. Publisher's original red-brown cloth with printed paper title labels to the spines. Page edges uncut. Complete with the half titles present in each volume. Illustrated with an engraved portrait frontispiece to volume one, additional engraved title pages to each volume and 25 full-page woodcut plates by Cruikshank. A very good set, the bindings square and firm with bumping to the corners and a couple of minor splits to the heads of the spines. The contents with a little cracking to the rear hinge of volume two, the engraved portrait frontispiece with a diagonal crease, a little raggedness to the edges and some spotting, light scattered foxing to the preliminary pages, and a neat contemporary previous owner's inscription to the title pages ("J: Waites - St: Johns Coll:-") are otherwise in very good order. A charming, unsophisticated set, uncommon thus.

A nicely illustrated edition of Cervantes' classic work, often labelled as the first modern novel, first issued in this form in 1824 by Knight and Lacy of London. Like his father and more famous brother George (to which the present work is often misattributed), Issac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856) was a pioneer in the history of comic illustration. The present work forms one of his most notable series of illustrations. Most appealing in the original cloth.