A “once-in-a-lifetime” copy of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, printed in Madrid four centuries ago and snapped up by a book-loving Bolivian diplomat in London in the 1930s, has sold at auction in Paris for €504,000 (£432,600).
A first edition of Cervantes’ short story collection, Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Stories), bought at the same time by the same diplomat, fetched €403,200 at the sale at Sotheby’s.
Jorge Ortiz Linares, a passionate collector who was the son-in-law of Simón Patiño, the Bolivian tin magnate nicknamed the Andean Rockefeller, bought the books at Maggs Bros bookshop in London.
Having spent two years on a waiting list for such rare and fine examples of Cervantes’ best-known works to turn up, Ortiz Linares hopped on a plane from Paris as soon as the call from Maggs came through.
If the diplomat’s pursuit did not quite match Don Quixote’s epic and ridiculous quest, it certainly made plain his love of books – and his eye for quality. Jean-Baptiste de Proyart, an antiquarian books expert and dealer who acted as a consultant on the Sotheby’s sale, described Ortiz Linares’s Quixote as the rarest and best example to reach the market in decades.
Cervantes’ enduringly influential tale of an elderly provincial nobleman driven mad by his love of chivalric romances was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, and went through various editions.
Ortiz Linares’ set comprises the 1608 third edition of book one, which was amended by the author to fix earlier mistakes, and the 1615 first edition of book two. The set was bound in England at the end of the 17th century and formed part of the collection of the 18th-century bibliophile and Yorkshire MP Beilby Thompson. It stayed in his family until the estate was sold off in the 1930s.
“The 1608 edition is the last one that’s checked and revised by Cervantes,” Proyart told the Guardian when the sale was announced in October.
“It’s the good version of the text. It’s something like a miracle to find a very precious book that hasn’t been on the market for over 70 years – and for that book to be in one of the best possible combinations you can dream of. Having both texts in a similar binding – even if it’s not the first edition of the first part – makes the Ortiz Linares copy a bit of an absolute blue chip.”
Anne Heilbronn, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s France, was equally effusive. “An opportunity such as this to acquire a pair of early editions, disappeared for so long and with shared provenance stretching back at least three centuries, is one that, for most collectors, appears only once in a lifetime,” she said.
While less well known than the adventures of the deranged knight, the novelas ejemplares – which include the Dogs’ Colloquy, a thoughtful conversation between two hounds – offer witty and wise commentaries on life, love, greed and the social order.
