CERVANTES Miguel de El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Compuesto por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

Palau, 51984; Ford & Lansing, p.5; Biblioteca Nacional, Don Quijote, Ausgaben in vierhundert Jahren, 9; Henrich, n° 10 (erroneous pagination); Salvà, 1551.

The rare second Brussels edition.

The edition follows closely the first Brussels edition, published four years earlier. Here, some spelling mistakes have been corrected, but since the text was entirely reset, others have appeared, and the sonnet by Solisdàn to Don Quichotte has been omitted. The publisher Velpius, who had acquired the exclusive rights to publish part one in 1607, sold a share to his competitor Hubert Antoine just two years before the expiration of the privilege. Hubert Antoine published indeed part two of the epic work in 1616, without sharing the new privilege with Velpius.

This copy is complete according to the collation given in the exhibition catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional, but who mention a faulty pagination: we have 16 unnumbered pages including the title page, followed by 583 numbered pages and 9 unnumbered pages. The last page contains the privilege for the following 6 years, dated 6 March 1607.

Literary provenance

This copy belonged to Jean Joseph Marius Diouloufet (1771-1840) with his signature on the title and on the flyleaf. Diouloufet was a Provençal poet and the author of Provençal poetry, fables and tales. His “Don Quichotte philosophe” was published in the year of his death. A loose leaf bears his (?) notes with suggestions for typographical corrections between pages 24 and 50.

Fine copy.