Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated from the Spanish by Charles Jarvis. With 100 Illustrations by A. B. Houghton, Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. by CERVANTES, Miguel de - 1866

1866. London: Frederick Warne and Company, 1866. 4to., in full red straight-grain morooco, boards and spine richly gilt, all edges gilt. With 100 illustrations including a full-page frontispiece and 99 cuts in the text; pp. [iv], xiii, [i], 710, [ii]; a little spotting to first and last few leaves, otherwise a very good copy in a choice binding. First edition thus in what appears to be a publisher's deluxe binding. With a neat ink presentation inscription "Charles James Jessel May 1873. A present from Emile Merton". Charles Jessel was the son of the famous lawyer, Master of the Rolls, and MP Sir George Jessel. A scarce edition with Arthur Houghton's illustrations engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. The distinctive, angular signature of the Brothers appended to wood-engraved illustrations from the 1840s onwards was readily recognised. Indeed, so widespread was their work and influence during the two decades 1850 to 1870 that their name has become synonymous with Victorian engraving on wood, and one student of the period called the period the ‘Dalziel Era’. As engravers, art directors and publishers, the Dalziels - George (1815-1902) and Edward (1817-1905) - worked with some of the nineteenth century’s greatest talents in Art and Literature. The list of the illustrators whose work they engraved is distinguished: George Cruikshank, Richard (‘Dicky’) Doyle, Birket Foster, John Gilbert, Charles Green, William Harvey, Arthur Boyd Houghton, Arthur Hughes and Charles Keene, amongst many others. The Dalziels became arbiters of taste, and during the 1850s and 1860s publishers turned to them for advice and guidance when venturing into illustrative literature.