The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled as the first modern novel and one of the greatest ever written. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world.

The plot revolves around the adventures of a member of the lowest nobility, a hidalgo (Son of Someone) from La Mancha named Alonso Quijano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he either loses or pretends to have lost his mind in order to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical monologues on knighthood — already considered old-fashioned at the time — and representing the most vivid realism in contrast to his master's idealism.

For this version of Don Quixote our graphic designer combined both Volume I and II from the Gutenberg edition—produced by David Widger—and added the illustrations by the French artist Gustave Doré from the 1863 editon of Don Quixote, published by Hachette and Co. in Paris, and Cassell and Co. in London.

The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1897).

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When first published, Don Quixote was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution, it was better known for its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and was seen as a story of disenchantment. In the nineteenth century, it was seen as social commentary, but no one could easily tell “whose side Cervantes was on.” Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote’s idealism and nobility are viewed by the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality. By the twentieth century, the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.

Notes by Harold Bloom, Puchau de Lecea, Chrisafis Angelique, Liz Meneo, and Mikesch Muecke