The First Part of The Life and Achievements of the Renowned Don Quixote De La Mancha [VINTAGE 1941]

Fine condition dark blue cloth boards with gold spine lettering within a red and gold block with an additional gold decoration contained within a very good condition color illustrated slipcase. Includes Foreword by Edwin Seaver; and The Author's Preface to the Reader and tinted red upper page edges. Illustrated with color wood engravings by Hans Alexander Mueller. Translated by Peter Motteux. Some rubbing wear at the spine's gold letters and red border. All pages are in fine unmarked condition and the binding is exceedingly tight and square (see photographs). "In the year 1605, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, an unsuccessful writer and former soldier by the name of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra published a book that was to place his name forever in the pantheon of the immortals. The book was an immediate and extraordinary success, although -- such were the times -- the author profited little thereby. Six editions were printed during the first year and translations into foreign languages quickly followed. (Thomas Shelton began working on his famous translation into English, which quite possibly Skakespeare may have read, two years after the original was published in Spain.) The story was pirated on all sides. Indeed, there was even a very popular "sequel" published before the author had finished writing the second part of his own book. Cervantes' novel - for such we call it, although there is no book quite like it in all literature -- told of the adventures of an eccentric hidalgo who adopted the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha, when his brain had become so addled from reading too many romances on knighthood that his "wit was wholly extinguished" and he "fell into one of the strangest conceits that ever madman stumbled on in this world." What that conceit was, what was the nature of Don Quixote's madness, is by now a matter of general contention, if not of general knowledge. Don Quixote is the inspiration of an old man, an old soldier of the world who has known most of the misfortunes that can befall a man and has yet remained of good humor and stout heart. Cervantes had known what it was to be buffeted and kicked around for all his pains, to sally forth again and again with fond hopes and high purpose, only to come limping home with standard muddied and bedraggled, amidst the world's indifference or ribald laughter, If, then, as the English critic Sir Walter Raleigh has said, Cervantes' masterpiece is "the wisest and most splendid book in the world," perhaps it is because the way of the Knight parallels so closely the tragically absurd progress of all of us pilgrims on this earth. But in the last analysis, it is impossible wholly to encompass the greatness of a book like Don Quizxote. As impossible as it is to encompass the wholeness of life. For just as the sum of life is greater than any combination of all its parts, so, too, the work of Cervantes, like the work of Shakespeare, is greater than any combination of characters, or incidents, or beautiful or striking passages contained therein. In an age of social upheaval like our own, when the individual tends to be submerged in the mass, when the mass is fostered at the expense of the individual and when, indeed, the individual may suffer punishment for merely being himself, it is heartening to read again a book which so preeminently celebrates the unique and solitary human being." - excerpt from the Foreword by Edwin Seaver.…