About author, translators, and illustrators

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor’s prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616. See a complete biography in Spanish (written by Luis Astrana Marín between 1948 and 1958).

Translation:

EDITH GROSSMAN is the distinguished prize-winning translator of major works by leading contemporary Hispanic writers, including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alvaro Mutis, and Mayra Montero. Her new translation of Don Quixote is Edith Grossman’s excursion into the classic literature of an earlier time, a natural kind of progression in reverse. Now she employs her many years’ experience translating modern classics to bring us an elegantly contemporary translation of Don Quixote. She chose to use Martín de Riquer’s 1950 edition of Don Quixote in Spanish, although the 1989 edition is considered better. See reviews of Grossman’s translation in the Introduction chapter of this online edition.

Additionally, Publiconsulting Media has used other translation resources as indicated with notes to the applicable texts.

Illustrations:

RICARDO BALACA (1844-1880) was a Spanish painter and illustrator who specialized in battle scenes. He provided illustrations for a deluxe edition of Don Quixote, annotated by the Cervantes scholar Nicolás Díaz de Benjumea, and published by Montaner i Simón in Barcelona, after Balaca’s death. Due to his dead, Josep Lluís Pellicer illustrated volume II of this edition.

JOSEP LLUIS PELLICER (1842-1901) was the artistic director for «Editorial Montaner i Simón», where he illustrated Don Quixote, The Legend of the Cid by José Zorrilla and some of the Episodios Nacionales by Benito Pérez Galdós.