The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote - (Works of Tobias Smollett) by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

About the Book

This authoritative textual edition presents Smollett's translation of Cervantes's Don Quixote in the form most faithful to Smollett's own intentions. It includes Francis Hayman's twenty-eight illustrations engraved for the original edition, Smollett's explanatory notes, and his prefatory "Life of Cervantes."

Book Synopsis

This authoritative textual edition presents Tobias Smollett's translation of Cervantes's Don Quixote in the form most faithful to Smollett's own intentions. It includes Francis Hayman's twenty-eight illustrations engraved for the original edition, Smollett's explanatory notes, and his prefatory "Life of Cervantes."

Smollett's Don Quixote first appeared in 1755 and was for many years the most popular English-language version of Cervantes's masterpiece. However, soon after the start of the nineteenth century, its reputation began to suffer. Rival translators, literary hucksters, and careless scholars initiated or fed a variety of charges against Smollett--even plagiarism. For almost 130 years no publisher risked reprinting it.

Redemption began in 1986, when the distinguished Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, in his foreword to a new (albeit flawed) edition of Smollett's translation, declared it to be "the authentic vernacular version" of Don Quixote in English. Fuentes's opinion was in accord with that of the preeminent Cervantist, Francisco Rodríguez Marín, who decades earlier had declared Smollett's Don Quixote to be his preferred English version.

Martin C. Battestin's introduction discusses the composition, publication, and controversial reception of Smollett's Don Quixote. Battestin's notes identify Smollett's sources in his "Life of Cervantes" and in his commentary, provide cross-references to his other works, and illustrate Smollett's originality or dependence on previous translations. Also included is a complete textual apparatus, a glossary of unfamiliar terms, and an appendix comparing a selection of Francis Hayman's original illustrations with the engraved renderings used in the book.

Review Quotes

Somehow lost in the simultaneous and shuffling dust behind Edith Grossman's triumphal chariot is another extraordinary translation of Cervante's masterpiece . . . This edition, a product of superb critical and textual scholarship, goes back to Thursday, 25 February, 1755, to the publication of Don Quixote as translated by the novelist Tobias Smollett, probably, in the good opinion and judgement of people of knowledge and authority, the finest rendering of Don Quixote in the English language. . . . In the absence of Harold Bloom, permit me, if you please, to blow the trumpet for the definitive English version and translation of a magnificent novel.

--George Garrett "Hollins Critic"

The edition produced by Battestin and O M Brack Jr., is an extraordinary achievement, nothing short of inspirational.

--Jim May "editor of ECCB"

Battestin's handsome edition for the University of Georgia Press Works of Tobias Smollett, supported by O. M. Brack's meticulous squiring of the text, restores the book to its proper state, along with its magnificent series of illustrations by Francis Hayman. The Smollett Quixote finally sallies forth as the essential translation for readers of Cervantes who are interested in his profound influence on eighteenth-century British culture, or on the development of the novel as a modern literary genre. . . . Smollett transforms the prose of his template into something mucky, rumbustious and deliciously readable. . . . Smollett's notes on the faithfulness of Cervantes to 'the memory of the real substantial chivalry' also anticipate a later romantic tradition of Quixotism, and confirm that his translation represents the closest engagement of any writer with a book that gave form and spirit to the British comic novel.

--Times Literary Suppplement

Beyond contributing to discussions about the visual dynamics of the eighteenth-century text, this edition of Don Quixote has the potential to influence current conversations about the role translation played in shaping eighteenth-century fiction. . . .The importance of [this] edition to Smollett studies cannot be overstated.

--Eighteenth Century Scotland

The only translation in English that feels as rambunctious as the original feels in Spanish. It opens up the book completely.

--Salman Rushdie

About the Author

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Author)
MIGUEL de CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616) is widely regarded as the finest writer in the Spanish language.

O M Brack Jr. (Editor)
O M BRACK, JR., a professor of English literature emeritus at Arizona State University, is coauthor of Samuel Johnson's Early Biographers and coeditor of The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson. He has edited volumes of the Works of Samuel Johnson published by Yale and is textual editor for the Georgia series the Works of Tobias Smollett. Brack is the curator of the 2009 Johnson tercentenary exhibition at the Huntington Library.