El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Madrid: Gabriel de Sancha, 1797-98. First edition of the first annotated edition of Don Quixote. Octavo, five volumes, bound in contemporary tree calf, covers with a swashed diagonal cross, edged with a gilt roll, gilt bands and green lettering pieces, marbled endpapers, sprinkled edges. With 2 engraved portraits, 2 engraved headpieces, 3 folding maps, and 31 engraved plates executed by P. Duflos and Moreno Tejada after R. Ximeno, A. Navarro, Monnet and Camaron y Paret. In near fine condition. "This beautiful edition, which is printed on excellent paper, is of the highest importance for Pellicer's erudite notes and commentary, and for his painstaking corrections of the text" (Ruis). By focusing his attention on the authentic Spanish folklore that Cervantes would have drawn upon, Pellicer set the precedent for modern editorial methods. The present edition is illustrated with numerous fine plates, described by Ashbee as "among the finest produced in Spain." Palau 52030; Salva 1568; Mas II, 446; Ruis I, 59; Ashbee Iconography of Don Quixote 93. Don Quixote tells the tale of a man so entranced by reading about the chivalrous romantic ideals touted in books that he decides to take up his sword and become a knight-errant himself, with the aims of defending the helpless and warding off the wicked. With his somewhat confused laborer-turned-squire, Sancho Panza, they roam the world together and have adventures that have haunted reader's imaginations for nearly four hundred years. Don Quixote is generally recognized as the first modern novel. Over those years, it has had an incredible influence on thousands of writers, from Dickens to Faulkner, who once said he reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible". Vladimir Nabokov said of the book: "Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes's womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality... He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon.