Paris

First edition.
Half chocolate shagreen binding, spine with five raised bands showing some light rubbing, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, contemporary binding.
Signed autograph inscription from Elme-Marie Caro to (Henri) Wallon when he was Minister of Public Instruction.
Occasional light worming.

First edition. Wood engraving signed in the plate by the artist.

Plate created specifically for the illustration of Cervantes' Don Quixote for the Hachette edition of 1863.

Gustave Doré first traveled to Spain in 1855, in the company of Théophile Gautier and publisher Paul Dalloz. In 1861, responding to a commission from the journal Le Tour du monde, he returned there with Baron Jean Charles Davillier, a knowledgeable hispanophile, who would recount their journey in his Voyage en Espagne.
Doré went there primarily with a view to illustrating Don Quixote: "I am therefore going to the homeland of this illustrious hidalgo to study all the places he traveled through and filled with his exploits, and thus create something that will have its local flavor". Gustave Doré would thus conduct several working sessions with Louis Viardot, translator of Cervantes' text.
Cervantes' novel ranks among the most illustrated stories in European literature, but Doré wanted to surpass his predecessors (Tony Johannot, Grandville, Daumier...). Upon its publication in 1863, the work would be the subject of unanimous praise, notably from Émile Zola: "They call that illustrating a work: I maintain that it's remaking it. Instead of one masterpiece, the human spirit now counts two".

See our other engravings by Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré, L'Imaginaire au pouvoir (Musée d'Orsay, 2014)

Virtual exhibition on Gustave Doré on the Gallica website

New edition.
A few reader's marks and notes from the hand of the author Maurice Blanchot in the margins of some leaves of Poèmes barbares.
Spine slightly wrinkled, otherwise a good copy.

First edition, one of 60 numbered copies on pur fil, the only large paper copies.
A very attractive copy.