One day in the early 1930s, a young Bolivian diplomat named Jorge Ortiz Linares walked into the illustrious Maggs Bros bookshop in London to ask if they might have a particularly fine edition of Don Quixote for sale.
But even for Ortiz Linares – a dedicated bibliophile who also happened to be the son-in-law of Simón Patiño, the Bolivian tin magnate nicknamed the Andean Rockefeller – the answer was a polite no.
The man at Maggs did, however, put his name on a waiting list and promise to get in touch should such a copy ever materialise.
Two years later the same well-mannered assistant rang Ortiz Linares in Paris with some good news.
The diplomat dashed across the Channel on a plane and, on 21 December 1936, acquired a fabulously rare edition of Don Quixote, as well as a vanishingly scarce first edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ short story collection, the Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary stories).
Four hundred years after they were printed in Madrid, and almost a century after they were bought by Ortiz Linares, the books are expected to fetch up to €900,000 (£790,000) when they are auctioned by Sotheby’s in Paris in December, with Don Quixote estimated at €400,000-600,000 and the Novelas ejemplares at €200,000-300,000.
According to Jean-Baptiste de Proyart, an antiquarian books expert and dealer who is acting as consultant to the sale, Ortiz Linares’ Quixote is the rarest and best example to have reached the market in decades.
Cervantes’ seminal tale of an elderly provincial nobleman driven mad, and to increasingly foolhardy exploits, by his love of chivalric romances was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, and went through various editions before its author died in 1616.
Ortiz Linares’ set comprises the 1608 third edition of book one, which was amended by the author to fix earlier mistakes – such as Sancho Panza’s famously disappearing and suddenly reappearing ass – and the 1615 first edition of book two.
“The 1608 edition is the last one that’s checked and revised by Cervantes,” said Proyart.
“It’s the good version of the text. It’s something like a miracle to find a very precious book that hasn’t been on the market for over 70 years – and for that book to be in one of the best possible combinations you can dream of.
“Having both texts in a similar binding – even if it’s not the first edition of the first part – makes the Ortiz Linares copy a bit of an absolute blue chip.”
The set was bound in England at the end of the 17th century and formed part of the collection of the 18th-century bibliophile and Yorkshire MP Beilby Thompson. It stayed in his family until the estate was sold off in the 1930s.
Meanwhile, Ortiz Linares’ copy of the Novelas ejemplares – described in Maggs’s 1936 catalogue as “the excessively rare first edition … the high-water mark of the short story in the 17th century” – bears the coat of arms of the head keeper of Louis XIV’s library.
Though less celebrated than the adventures of the errant knight, the short stories offer wry and perceptive commentaries on love, life, greed and society. They also include the Dogs’ Colloquy, a thoughtful conversation between two hounds.
“The novelas are extremely modern and nowadays they’re easier to read than the Quixote,” said Proyart.
“There’s such modernity in that text, and it hasn’t changed at all. They’re not as well known as the Quixote, which is universal. The Novelas ejemplares are more read by people who know something about Spanish and world literature.”
The works by Cervantes are not the only Ortiz Linares treasures offered for sale. The Bolivian, whom Proyart calls “a very educated man and a very talented diplomat”, also collected French literature and works relating to South America.
A late 17th-century book by Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull, one of the viceroys of Peru, offers glimpses of pirates, the infernal mines at Potosí and Spain’s imperial activities (it is estimated to sell for €30,000-50,000), while Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s the Florida of the Inca chronicles Hernando de Soto’s expedition to Florida (€40,000-60,000).
Although Ortiz Linares’ Quixote may not reach the $1.65m that a set of the 1605 and 1615 first editions fetched in New York in 1989, Sotheby’s says it remains a unique proposition.
“An opportunity such as this to acquire a pair of early editions, disappeared for so long and with shared provenance stretching back at least three centuries, is one that, for most collectors, appears only once in a lifetime,” said Anne Heilbronn, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s France.
For Proyart, this particular Quixote represents more than just a very expensive, very beautifully bound set of Cervantes’ musings on literature, reality, madness, honour, duty and adventure.
“The reputation of a universal writer like Cervantes or Shakespeare also depends on what we keep of them,” he said.
“Keeping the first, or the best possible, edition of their texts is a bit like the foundation of their glory.
“These books need to be preserved because there’s something for scholars to understand and to discover in each of the copies. They’re showing that Cervantes is still here just as he was published.”
