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, and called attention to the visual "misrepresentations" of the engravings of other versions.
Vincente de los Ríos fought aggresively to reclaim the novel from
foreign
publishers by emphasizing its essentially Spanish character,
and countered conservative Spanish critics who claimed that Cervantes' sole purpose was to parody the
romances of chivalry. The effort succeeded, at least in Spain. 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.
By the 1790s pocket-sized editions were sold by a number of printing
presses and book shops. These miniature versions of Don Quixote were less
expensive, yet still allowed readers to enjoy the engravings, even though
much reduced in size.
Other scholarly editions of Don
Quixote began to appear with regularity, questioning the authority
of the Spanish Royal Academy. Individual editors vied with each other to
produce the most "scholarly" apparatus with the most
"scientific" notes. Don Juan Antonio Pellicer's five-volume
edition appeared in 1797-1798. As librarian to the king and member of the
Royal Academy of History, Pellicer produced what he called a "new
edition, newly corrected, with new notes, new engravings, new analysis,
and with the life of the author newly added."
Thirty-six years later, Pellicer's impressive version was superseded by
Don Diego Clemencin's six-volume edition --still consulted by Cervantes scholars-- which more than tripled
the number of scholarly notes. Its serious pretensions are evident in the
fact that it claims to correct Cervantes'
language and includes no engravings. The space customarily reserved for
the engravings that depicted Don Quixote's
adventures is instead replaced with historical explanations, parallel
literary texts, contemporary lore, lexicographical analyses and scholarly
commentary.
Remarkable in some ways was the fact that Spanish language editions were
also printed abroad in great numbers, pointing out that readers of
Spanish--whether Spaniards living outside Spain
or non-Spaniards who claimed expertise in the language--could consult
"corrected" versions of the novel and/or engage in scholarly
debates about Cervantes' language and
culture. The most expensively produced Spanish version--the "Tonson
Edition"--was published by Lord Carteret for Queen Caroline of
England. Printed in London in 1738 with an extensive series of engravings
by J. Vanderbank, sales of this edition were never
expected to off-set
production costs. Expenses were underwritten by the Countess Montijo, wife
of the Spanish ambassador to the Court of St. James, in an effort to
publicize Cervantes' text in the original.
This edition also included for the first time an essay by "Dr. Juan
Oldfield" explaining the allegorical significance of the various
engravings.
The Reverend John Bowle edited the first Spanish version printed in
England with a complete scholarly apparatus. Reverend Bowle
hoped to create a market for subscribers by publishing two letters he had
written to Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, in 1777, in
which he refers to the progress of his forthcoming edition. Bowle was
known as a "difficult" individual, and his scholarly effort was
not without critics. By 1784 he was compelled to respond to "very
unfair practices ... of my edition of Don
Quixote...and have found the perpetrators ...to have been a false
friend, and another, whose encomium I should regard as an affront and real
slander...."
Bowle no doubt had in mind one of his most vicious enemies, Joseph
Baretti, also a translator of Spanish works into English. In Baretti's
work Tolondron. Speeches to John Bowle about his Edition of Don Quixote, Bowle is spared
no insult, including Baretti's accusation that he was unable to speak
Spanish, did not know Spanish grammar, and frequented taverns more often
than he should.
Despite Bowle's numerous complaints of unjustified attacks by his
contemporaries, the scholarly impact of his edition on other editors--both
in England and Spain--was considerable. Pellicer, for instance, belittles
Bowles' contribution to an understanding of Cervantes' novel, while
admitting that he incorporated many of Bowles' notes and annotations in
his own version. Interest in scholarly editions of Don Quixote began to
wane as more translations of the novel appeared. 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.
