L'ingénieux Hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche Miguel Cervantes and Gus Bofa Literature

CERVANTES, MIGUEL DE. L'ingénieux Hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche. Paris: Simon Kra, 1926. Four volumes, 4to, #101 of 450 copies printed on Papier Velin and numbered from 50 to 500, attractively bound in ¾ red leather with five raised bands and six compartments, four compartments have gilt devices of a knight, t.e.g., very minor wear. Translation by Louis Viardot, Preface by Miguel de Unamuno. This work is copiously illustrated with over 400 full-page color plates & text drawings by Gus Bofa (1883-1968), a true tour de force by this artist. Bofa was born in France and during WWI was a battlefield artist. After returning from the war, he drew satirical comic art, posters & book illustrations for works by Octave Mirbeau, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, et al. According to the New York Times (January 23, 2018): When the French artist Gus Bofa died in 1968, his obituary in Le Nouveau Planete described him as 'a profound thinker...a bilingual philosopher who knew how to tell us about fear in words and images.' As an editor, writer, and illustrator, Bofa stands at a crossroads between numerous art forms: book illustration, comics, poster-art, aphorisms, and visual biography...Bofa himself has become as obscure as the shadowy figures that populate his drawings. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that toward the end of his life, when he could have consolidated his reputation, he withdrew from public life and became a virtual recluse. Another is the marginal place that a book illustrator receives in literary history...