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Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
Gutierrez Rufo, Juan (1547-1620) La Austriada de Juan Rufo, Jurado de la Ciudad de Cordova.
Madrid: Aleso Gomez, 1584.
First edition, octavo, woodcut arms of dedicatee; full-page woodcut author portrait; bound in full contemporary parchment, titled in ink on spine; title page mounted with professional paper restoration; marginal paper losses to D1, E8 & K1 mended with the occasional loss of a few letters (restored in pen facsimile); signature Gg with nine leaves, including two pages numbered 234 with visible stub from cancel; later endleaves, a pleasing copy overall, despite the noted faults; 5 3/4 x 4 in.
Cervantes contributed a sonnet in praise of La Austriada that appears in the preliminary material. In Don Quixote, part I, chapter VI, while the priest and the barber are browsing through the knight errant's library, looking for books to burn, Rufo's work is set aside, along with two others. "'These three books,' said the curate, 'are the best that have been written in Castilian in heroic verse, and they may compare with the most famous of Italy; let them be preserved as the richest treasures of poetry that Spain possesses.'"
