The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes

The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Translated from The Spanish by Walter K. Kelly

1881

The "Novelas Exemplares" were first published in 1613, three years before the death of Cervantes. They are all original, and have the air of being drawn from his personal experience and observation.

Novelas ejemplares ("Exemplary Novels") is a series of twelve novellas that follow the model established in Italy, written by Miguel de Cervantes between 1590 and 1612. The collection was printed in Madrid in 1613 by Juan de la Cuesta, and received well in the wake of the first part of Don Quixote.

Cervantes boasted in his foreword to have been the first to write novelas in the Spanish language:

My genius and my inclination prompt me to this kind of writing; the more so as I consider (and with truth) that I am the first who has written novels in the Spanish language, though many have hitherto appeared among us, all of them translated from foreign authors. But these are my own, neither imitated nor stolen from anyone; my genius has engendered them, my pen has brought them forth, and they are growing up in the arms of the press.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

DEDICATION

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

THE LADY CORNELIA. RINCONETE AND CORTADILLO: THE LICENTIATE VIDRIERA; OR, DOCTOR GLASS-CASE. THE DECEITFUL MARRIAGEDIALOGUE BETWEEN SCIPIO AND BERGANZE, DOGS OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE RESURRECTION IN THE CITY OF VALLADOLID, COMMONLY CALLED THE DOGS OF MAHUDESTHE LITTLE GIPSY GIRL. THE GENEROUS LOVER. THE SPANISH-ENGLISH LADY. THE FORCE OF BLOOD. THE JEALOUS ESTRAMADURAN. THE ILLUSTRIOUS SCULLERY-MAID. THE TWO DAMSELS.