Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de La Mancha

4 volumes in-12, green morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, arms of the Princess of Lamballe stamped in gold at the center, spine with raised bands and gilt decoration, gilt fillet on the edges, inner gilt roll, all edges gilt. Armorial binding of the period.

156 x 93 mm.

Cervantes. [Adventures of Don Quixote in Spanish]. Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de La Mancha. composed by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. With very beautiful engravings, engraved after the drawings of Coypel, First Painter to the King of France, in four volumes. 
The Hague, P. Gosse and A. Moetjens, 1744.

Don Quixote specially bound for the Princess of Lamballe (1749-1792), the close friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette, around the year 1775 in green morocco leather with a selection of twenty plates after Coypel engraved by Folkema, Fukke and Tanje; the regular copies include a portrait and 24 plates.

Don Quixote, a masterpiece of world literature, was probably written between 1598 and 1604. The first part was published in 1605.
Ten years later, in 1615, a second part appeared, which is in a sense the illustration, interpretation, and final conclusion of the first.
According to what Cervantes himself states in the Prologue to the First Part, his aim was to write a chivalric novel capable of standing apart from all the others widely popular at that time.

“The novel originated as a polemical inspiration against books of chivalry, which it simply set out to oppose in the form of imitation; but little by little it was transformed into a poetic and sincere representation of an ever-wider and more complex world, within which there works a force analogous to that which explains individual life and universal life, human history, and its perpetual becoming. For Cervantes, this force manifests itself essentially in three aspects, facets of one prism: on the one hand, the generosity and moral greatness of Don Quixote; on the other, the realism and practical selfishness of Sancho Panza; but these two modes of action, apparently irreconcilable, profoundly contradictory, give way to the mysterious appeal of an ideal of beauty which, if it does not triumph, at least survives disillusionments, constantly giving the lie to distressing reality. But what is this ideal? The answer can only be obscure; except that, deeply rooted in man, the power has been given to transcend himself; and especially in the case of Cervantes, this transcendence is realized in the work of art where it finds a field proper to the exercise of his talent. Faced with this poetic universe that his imagination installs in reality, Cervantes is led to feel a sense of charity that cleaves, with benevolent indulgence, to all the forms in which love is realized: a kind of natural inspiration that carries all men along in its wake. And even within his anxious haste, it is towards a contemplative life that he leads us. Thus, thanks to this sense of charity, all enter the luminous wake of the incredible adventures of Don Quixote: the entire work is wrapped in an immaterial and translucent smile which secretly reveals an inexhaustible wealth of humanity and of truly lived experiences. The magic of this smile, conferring on the narrative an inimitable character, has ensured Cervantes a triumphant fame. ”

Precious copy adorned with fresh green morocco bindings around the year 1775 bearing the arms of the Princess of Lamballe, one of the rarest and most moving provenances of the Ancien Régime. 

Marie-Thérèse de Savoie-Carignan, Princess of Lamballe (1749-1792), became a widow at eighteen. Her father-in-law, who adored her, made her his adopted daughter, when Marie-Antoinette kept her close by appointing her superintendent of her household.
Soon the tenderest friendship united the Queen and the Princess.

“The Princess of Lamballe, after sharing the captivity of the Queen at the Temple for a few days, was removed at night and transferred to the Force. That was her death sentence. There she encountered assassins whom her gentle and poetic features could not move to pity. She was slaughtered by the ‘Septembriseurs,’ who horribly desecrated her corpse, and ‘as if, even in death, she should not be separated from the one for whom she died, three letters from the Queen fell from the structure of her hairstyle into the blood. The mob beat, mutilated, dragged her corpse; the Revolution left her memory pure. The books of Madame de Lamballe are very few in number and their condition is most often mediocre’ (E. Quentin Bauchart, Les Femmes bibliophiles de France).

Exceptional copy, of great rarity, of Don Quixote of Madame de Lamballe preserved in its armorial bindings in brilliant contemporary green morocco.