"The finest edition of Don Quixote that has ever been printed" (Updike)

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha [...]. Nueva edicion corregida por la Real Academia España.

$27,455.00

A large copy of the most famous edition of "Don Quixote" ever produced. The "Ibarra" edition of 1780 was described by Palau as "magnificent, superior in artistic beauty to all others produced in Spain or abroad"; Richard Ford declares that "no grand library should be without it". Undoubtedly it was on these merits that this edition was famously cast in Roman Polanski's 1999 thriller "The Ninth Gate": in the exposition of that film, Johnny Depp's character (an enterprising albeit vulture-minded rare book dealer) swindles an unwitting couple, heirs to a library to be dispersed, out of what in fact was their pièce de résistance - a set of Ibarra's "Quixote" which he claims to be worth a mere four thousand dollars.

The Ibarra edition was prepared at great expense over the course of seven years for the Real Academia, printed on deluxe paper in a specifically-designed typeface and illustrated by the foremost Spanish artists of the time. To this day it remains a monument of Spanish printing, and a fitting tribute to what many regard as the first modern novel in the Hispanic tradition.

Not only setting new standards of beauty and quality of production, Ibarra's celebrated edition also firmly established "Don Quixote" in the literary canon. Yet even upon its first publication in 1605, Cervantes' book had already won immediate fame in Spain and beyond for its "variety, liveliness, and gibes at the famous", while its universal humanity has assured its status as "one of those universal works which are read by all ages at all times" (PMM).