Gustave Doré

Title: L'Espagne, m urs et paysages, histoire et monuments, etc. Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC. The HISTORY OF EUROPE collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This collection includes works chronicling the development of Western civilisation to the modern age. Highlights include the development of language, political and educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts. The selection documents periods of civil war, migration, shifts in power, Muslim expansion into Central Europe, complex feudal loyalties, the aristocracy of new nations, and European expansion into the New World. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Godard, L on; Dor, Gustave; 1862. 8 . 10161.e.18.

"His Don Quixote from its first to its last page is] a marvel of imagination, poetry, sentiment, and sarcasm. . . . People still speak of it only as 'Dore's Don Quixote'." Life and Reminiscences of Gustave DoreDore himself had something of Quixote's chivalry and spent an arduous life drafting impossible dreams; he knew fame as well as pain, disillusionment, and failure. At age 30 he was ready for Quixote and prepared to realize his dream of illustrating the world's great books. Dore never became the painter he yearned to be, but he came very close to realizing his desired intimacy with the classics. His sympathy with Cervantes' satire was so close that, of the numerous Quixote interpretations by many outstanding artists, Dore's has become the standard. The French translation of Cervantes that Dore illustrated is forgotten; here is the memorable remnant of that work all 120 full-page plates, plus a selection of 70 characteristic headpiece and tailpiece vignettes. As can be seen in the backgrounds, Dore was ready professionally as well as emotionally for Quixote. He had traveled through Spain preparing an earlier work, and his graphic memory was as strong and indelible as that of another great Quixote interpreter, Picasso. From Sancho's village through Spanish hills and dry plateaus, in the Pyrenees and by the sea, in rural castles and Barcelona luxury, Dore illuminated the seventeenth-century setting with a nineteenth-century acquaintance with the scene. Dore was also a careful student of Renaissance costume and architecture; his minutiae, so copious, are invariably correct. Captions written especially for this edition describe the action with reference to the original Spanish text, capturing high points of the story. But of course Dore conveys it all in a picture: the famous windmill charge, traversing the Sierra Morena, battling the Knight of the White Moon, visions of giants, dragons, flaming lakes, and damsels, the Dulcinea never found, all in full-page wood engravings. Dore's marvelous penchant for ghostly effects in panoramic landscapes and seascapes finds large scope here, carefully engraved by one of the best of his longtime studio engravers, H. Pisano. Dore's Man of la Mancha glows with the artist's own enchantment and humor. Artists and illustration aficionados will add this royalty-free volume to other Dover editions of Dore's works art he created to stand with great literature that now stands alone. Dore's Quixote indeed stands alone, unique among the knights and graphic castles in Spain."

Detailed plates from the Bible: the Creation scenes, Adam and Eve, horrifying visions of the Flood, the battle sequences with their monumental crowds, depictions of the life of Jesus and visions of the new Jerusalem. Each of the 241 plates is accompanied by the appropriate verses from the King James version of the Bible.

This superb compilation showcases the art of Gustave Dor , one of the nineteenth century's most prolific and successful book illustrators. Brimming with stunning images created to accompany the world's greatest literature, this volume compiles the very finest and most famous plates from Dor 's work. Scores of magnificent, finely wrought engravings feature such dramatic and powerful scenes as Don Quixote tilting at windmills, Christ driving the money-changers from the temple, Moses destroying the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and Charon rowing his ferry to the gates of Hell. Sources include immortal stories ranging from Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy to Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Poe's "The Raven," and more than a dozen other books. For graphic artists and designers, this collection will provide an outstanding assortment of royalty-free images. For lovers of art and literature, these inspired plates will provide the definitive imagery of a host of literary classics.

Gustave Dore (1832-83) was perhaps the most successful illustrator of the nineteenth century. His Dore Bible was a treasured possession in countless homes, and his best-received works continued to appear through the years in edition after edition. His illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy constitute one of his most highly regarded efforts and were Dore's personal favorites. The present volume reproduces with excellent clarity all 135 plates that Dore produced for The Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. From the depths of hell onto the mountain of purgatory and up to the empyrean realms of paradise, Dore's illustrations depict the passion and grandeur of Dante's masterpiece in such famous scenes as the embarkation of the souls for hell, Paolo and Francesca (four plates), the forest of suicides, Thais the harlot, Bertram de Born holding his severed head aloft, Ugolino (four plates), the emergence of Dante and Virgil from hell, the ascent up the mountain, the flight of the eagle, Arachne, the lustful sinners being purged in the seventh circle, the appearance of Beatrice, the planet Mercury, and the first splendors of paradise, Christ on the cross, the stairway of Saturn, the final vision of the Queen of Heaven, and many more. Each plate is accompanied by appropriate lines from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation of Dante's work.

Gustave Dore's Romantic style of illustration, supremely imaginative and richly detailed, was ideally suited to literary subjects. His wood-engraved illustrations for John Milton's monumental epic poem Paradise Lost, recounting mankind's fall from the grace of God through the work of Satan, were among his finest and most dramatic works. This volume presents superb reproductions of all 50 plates drawn by Dore and engraved in his studios for the original edition of Paradise Lost. Artists and art lovers will find in these pages supreme examples of the illustrator's art. Among the events depicted: the expulsion of Satan from heaven, Adam and Eve in Paradise, the nine-day fall of Lucifer's legions to Hell, the Creation, the temptation of Eve, the Flood, Moses holding up the Ten Commandments, and the fearsome creatures Milton referred to as "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire." The dreamlike, otherworldly quality Dore often brought to his work seems especially appropriate for Paradise Lost with its lofty spirit and epic events. Indeed, Dore's grand conception seems to realize perfectly Milton's own poetic version. Appropriate quotes from the text of Paradise Lost are printed alongside each illustration. A plot summary of the entire poem is also included.