DON QUIXOTE 2 vol. in folio (1869), with 370 illustrations by Gustave Doré, 120 full page. In French

Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1869. Gustave Doré,  Cervantes: The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha. Paris, Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1869. IN FRENCH.  2 volumes in folio (15" x 11.5" x 4", 38x29 cm, weight: 20lbs): XXIV-586pp. +   636pp                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -- With 370 illustrations by Gustave Doré engraved on wood by H. Pisan. Translation by Louis Viardot. The two volumes in folio format are covered with period bindings of good workman-ship, executed in red half-chagrin in red percaline, with ribbed spine decorated with gilded titles. Binding in good condition, solid, remains decorative despite traces of manipulation; Leather and percaline with marks and small stains, rubbing. Percaline pierced at the corners and partially on the cuts. A micro fragment of the toe-cap from volume 2 is missing. The marbled paper of the endpapers is cracked at the hinges. Fresh interiors, the paper has slight scattered foxing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Beautiful copy of the second printing of one of Gustave Doré's masterpieces, after the 1863 first edition (Edition is not noted in the book). 370 illustrations, of those 120 in full page plus in-text, all engraved on wood by Héliodore Pisan. "Almost always Doré's drawing attains qualities of ingenious finesse that he had not yet had the opportunity to show to this extent." (Leblanc, 68). Gustave Doré first travelled to Spain in 1855, in the company of Théophile Gautier and the publisher Paul Dalloz. In 1861, responding to a commission from the newspaper Le Tour du monde, he returned with Baron Jean Charles Davillier, a knowledgeable Hispanophile, who recounted their journey in his Voyage en Espagne.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Doré went there mainly for the illustration of Don Quixote: "I am therefore going to the homeland of this illustrious hidalgo to study all the places he has traveled and filled with his exploits and thus to do something that will have its local flavor." Gustave Doré will thus carry out several working sessions with Louis Viardot, translator of Cervantes' text Cervantes' novel is one of the most illustrated stories in European literature, but Doré wanted to surpass his predecessors (Tony Johannot, Grandville, Daumier, etc.). When it was published in 1863, the book was unanimously praised, notably by Emile Zola: "We call it illustrating a work: I claim that it is redoing it. Instead of.