At one, at two, at three… awarded. The first and second parts of ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’ were sold together this Wednesday for 504,000 euros at an auction in Paris. Sotheby’s, who did not specify who the buyer of this lot was, had estimated the sale price between 400,000 and 600,000 euros.
The first volume of Don Quixote, originally titled “El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha”, was the third edition, printed in 1608 by Juan de Cuesta and the last edition revised by Miguel de Cervantes. The second part, printed in 1615, is an original edition. These two parts of Don Quixote were bound together in the 18th century for an English collector.
These are two valuable copies that were part of the collection of old books of Jorge Ortiz Linares (1894-1965), Bolivian ambassador to France and son-in-law of Simón Patiño, a Bolivian tin magnate who was dubbed the ‘Andes Rockfeller’. Sotheby’s auctioned 87 lots from the magnificent collection of this Bolivian ambassador.
Linares, who had been passionate about rare books and manuscripts since childhood, had bought these two original editions of Don Quixote in 1936 from the Maggs bookshop in London. The Bolivian collector paid £850 for the two volumes at the time. Sotheby’s also sold a 1613 first edition of ‘Exemplary Novels’, also by Cervantes, for €403,200, a book kept by Jérôme Bignon, librarian to King Louis XIV of France.
It has also found a buyer for the first illegal edition of ‘El Ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha’, printed in 1605 by Jorge Rodríguez and the second unauthorized edition of the work. This version, sold by Sotheby’s for €56,700, features the first graphic representation of Don Quixote and his trusty squire.
Source: La Verdad
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