The eaಌrliest state of the Smirke 🔯Plates for Quixote.

• Robert Smirke (English).
• After text by Miquel de Cervantes.
• Engravings, Illustrative of Don Quixote, from pictures by Robert Smirke.
• London: Cadell and Davies, 1817.
• Folio album.
• Two leaves (title, plus table of plates), plus 74 plates (26 vignettes and 48 illustrations) after drawings by Robert Smirke, engraved by E. Engleheart, R. Goldiing, A. Raimbach, J. Scott, C. Warren, J. Mitan, Finden, C. Armstrong, et. al.
• Signed and dated in the print, mounted to folio sheets (one plate, number 11, is duplicated). 
• Proofs on India paper.
• Bound in later brown half morocco and marbled boards.

Robert Smirke was an English painter and illustrator who specialized in small paintings showing subjects taken from literature. His work was often in monochrome and was frequently adapted for engraving. He bec🐟ame a full member of the Royal Academy with his paintings on Do🌊n Quixote and Sancho in 1793, though the plates were issued as engravings in a four-volume quarto edition of 1818 by Cadell and Fields.

Smirke also did pictures related to Shakespeare and for Bowyer's History of England. Some of his work is currently in the Guildhall Art Gallery. The 1818 edition of Don Quixote that these proofs were made for was translated b💖y Mary Smirke, Robert's daughter.