OTHER.-ANIVERSARY OF FIRST EDITION OF QUIXOTE

Printers and book sellers of Don Quixote reissued the first edition of the novel without editorial intervention or commentary. The editio princeps of the novel's first part (Madrid, 1605) was the basic text reprinted throughout the seventeenth century in Spain as well as in the rest of Europe. It was not until the eighteenth century that a more "scientific" approach to the novel began to appear. In 1780 the Spanish Royal Academy "corrected" Cervantes' masterpiece with its publication of a handsome four-volume edition of the novel. For the first time, editors included a "critical" introduction, comprising a biography of the author, an "analysis" of the novel, a chronological/historical survey of Don Quixote's adventures, a series of engravings, which placed many of those adventures literally before the eyes of readers, and a map of Spain in order to follow Don Quixote's itinerary.

Vicente de los Ríos, the principle editor of the Spanish Academy edition, corrected the textual "errors" of previous editions. Less expensive versions of the Spanish Academy's edition soon became available in 1782 and 1787, replacing other editions of the novel and testifying to its popularity among a wider reading public that could not afford the 1780 original. Mister Juan Antonio Pellicer's five-volume edition appeared in 1797-1798.

 

And it was primarily the English version of Don Quixote that introduced Cervantes' masterpiece into the mainstream of English prose fiction. Henry Fielding would be the most famous beneficiary of this development. The "ENGLISH CERVANTES," as he would be called by many of his contemporaries, modeled his "new species of writing" ( Joseph Andrews, 1742) on the English translation of Don Quixote.