Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade ReviewThe only translation in English that feels as rambunctious as the original feels in Spanish. It opens up the book completely.
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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.
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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.
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The edition produced by Battestin and O M Brack Jr., is an extraordinary achievement, nothing short of inspirational.
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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.
