[Literature] Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de The Life and Exploits of the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha...

London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1742. In two volumes. First edition of the Charles Jarvis (sic) translation. 4to. xxxii, vi, (ii), 90, (12), 355; xii, 388 pp. (without Supplement to the Translator's Preface by William Warburton bound into first volume as found in some copies). Translated from the original Spanish by Charles Jervas. Illustrated with engraved frontispiece in first volume, and 68 plates throughout set, largely by Gerard van der Gucht after John Vanderbank, including an engraved portrait of Cervantes by George Vertue. Contemporary full brown speckled calf, rebacked, stamped in gilt; all edges trimmed; renewed marbled endpapers; scattered offsetting from plates; scattered soiling to text leaves; minor wrinkling from damp in top edge of some leaves in first volume. ESTC T59882

A handsome copy of Irish painter and translator Charle Jervas's Don Quixote (printed here as "Jarvis" due to a printer's error), considered the most faithful English translation at the time of its publication. Jervas's translation is the fourth English-language translation, preceded by Thomas Shelton's (1612 and 1620), John Phillips's (1687), and Peter Motteux's (1700-03).

Provenance

From the private collection of Jack Shapiro, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania