Földvári Books

The Scarcest Early Edition of Persiles

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de

Los trabaios de Persiles y Sigismunda. Historia setentrional. […].

En Pamplona: Por Nicolás de Assiayn [Asiaín], Impressor de libros, y a su costa, 1629. In later boards covered with marbled paper, manuscript title label in ink on spine. ff [1(title page)] [1]–296 [Complete, with several misnumberings to foliation and quire signatures]. Collation: 8º: 𝜋1 A–Z8 2A–2O8. Shelfmarks in pencil and ink on front pastedown; shelfmark label on rear pastedown. Title page restored. Sporadic dampstaining throughout; brown stain on ff. 57v–58r. Occasional small paper defects, with minimal loss of text on f. 166r. Overall in very good condition.

An extremely scarce early edition of Persiles, Cervantes’s final work and the last edition of the novel published in the seventeenth century.

Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda was Cervantes’s last work, completed shortly before his death in April 1616 and published posthumously the following year. Although subsequently overshadowed by Don Quijote, Cervantes himself placed considerable importance on the work. In the prologue to his Novelas ejemplares, he presented the projected Persiles as a work with which he intended to rival the Greek romance of Heliodorus.

Persiles was first published at Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta in 1617 and was an immediate publishing success: six further editions appeared in that year alone. By 1629 the novel had gone through ten editions, demonstrating the rapid circulation of Cervantes’s final work. The present Pamplona edition, printed and published by Nicolás de Asiaín, was the last of these early editions and apparently the scarcest. No further edition appeared during the remainder of the seventeenth century, and the work was not printed again until the eighteenth century.

Extremely scarce. Rius had not seen a copy of the present edition and recorded it from an earlier source. Iberian Books and USTC locate only two copies: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, and Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen. We trace no copy in the auction records of Rare Book Hub.

IB 24776; USTC 5033468; Palau 53903; Rius 355; Simón Díaz, v. 8, 943 

Literature: [EMS, 2005] Persiles y Sigismunda. (2005, July 25). Early Modern Spain.

.

Price: €16,000.00