Painted portrait of a bearded man in a white ruff, traditionally identified as Cervantes, against an olive ground

Portraits · Novelists · VIII of X

Miguel de Cervantes

1547–1616 · Novelist

Idle reader: … I would this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, and cleverest that could be imagined.

Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I would this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, and cleverest that could be imagined.

Miguel de Cervantes · preface to Don Quixote, 1605
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Miguel de Cervantes opens the preface to Don Quixote (1605) by speaking straight to his reader: he wished this book, his child, were the finest imaginable. Then he confesses that, though he passes for its father, he is only its stepfather.

Don Quixote, Part I, Author's Preface, 1605. Miguel de Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, tr. John Ormsby (London: Smith, Elder, 1885), vol. 1, p. 81. Spanish: Project Gutenberg #2000.

The originals

Oil portrait of a bearded man in a white ruff, traditionally identified as Miguel de Cervantes
The likenessATTRIBUTED TO JUAN DE JÁUREGUI · c. 1600Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (17th-century painting; Commons: PD-Art, PD-old-100-expired; Bridgeman scan).
The title page of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, Madrid, 1605, with the printer's device
Don Quixote, 1605The title page of the first edition, printed in Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta and dedicated to the Duke of Béjar.El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, first edition (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1605), title page. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.