CERVANTES Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616). Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated from the Original Spanish ... by Charles Jarvis, Esq. Embellished with twenty-four highly finished engravings from drawings designed expressly for this edition. London: T. M'Lean, 1819. 4 volumes, octavo. (8 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches). 21 (of 24) hand-coloured aquatints, after J. H. Clark. Plus a duplicate of the plate titled Don Quixote Instructing Sancho. Nineteenth century smooth tan calf, bound by Samuel Tout, spines with raised bands in six compartments, red and blue morocco labels in the second and third, the others with a repeat decoration in gilt, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. This rare early 19th-century printing of the famous Spanish novel Don Quixote is an exact line-for-line re-issue of Charles Jervas' translation from 1742. Often cited as the first modern European novel, Don Quixote is one of western literature's most enduring stories. An immediate success upon its initial publication in 1605, the book was quickly translated into French, German, Italian, and English. Many attempts were made throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to translate Cervantes' masterpiece into English, but modern scholars consider the translation done by Charles Jervas - first published in 1742 - to be the greatest of its time. It was the most widely reprinted English translation until the late 19th century. Jervas' work came to be known as the Jarvis translation due to a printer's misspelling of his name. cf. Abbey, Life 238.