# Is "Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha)" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Juan de la Cuesta for the bookseller Francisco de Robles, Madrid, 1605) is identified by: Part I: Madrid, printed by Juan de la Cuesta for Francisco de Robles, 1605, quarto; Part II: Madrid, Juan de la Cuesta, 1615. The Madrid Spanish originals (Cuesta 1605 / 1615) precede everything in every language and are the true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Part I: Madrid, printed by Juan de la Cuesta for Francisco de Robles, 1605, quarto
- Part II: Madrid, Juan de la Cuesta, 1615
- The census claim is confirmed
- The decisive point is the privilege in the preliminaries: Robles bought the printing privilege for CASTILE ONLY, so the true first edition's preliminaries carry a Castilian privilege alone
- A second authorized Cuesta edition, also Madrid and also dated 1605, was rushed out after Robles secured additional privileges for Aragon and Portugal in February 1605 — those added privileges in the preliminaries are how the second Cuesta 1605 is separated from the first, since imprint, printer, city and year are otherwise identical
- Second textual point: the first edition does not narrate the theft and recovery of Sancho's ass (the 'hurto del rucio'); the second Cuesta 1605 edition inserts those passages, awkwardly placed, and Cervantes himself blames the printers for the muddle in Part II. The 1605 first is notoriously full of typographic and chapter-numbering errors, a consequence of hasty Spanish printing
- Publisher imprint reads Juan de la Cuesta for the bookseller Francisco de Robles, Madrid

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
| Publisher | Juan de la Cuesta for the bookseller Francisco de Robles, Madrid |
| Year | 1605 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Part I: Madrid, printed by Juan de la Cuesta for Francisco de Robles, 1605, quarto |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Part I: Madrid, printed by Juan de la Cuesta for Francisco de Robles, 1605, quarto; Part II: Madrid, Juan de la Cuesta, 1615. The census claim is confirmed. The decisive point is the privilege in the preliminaries: Robles bought the printing privilege for CASTILE ONLY, so the true first edition's preliminaries carry a Castilian privilege alone. A second authorized Cuesta edition, also Madrid and also dated 1605, was rushed out after Robles secured additional privileges for Aragon and Portugal in February 1605 — those added privileges in the preliminaries are how the second Cuesta 1605 is separated from the first, since imprint, printer, city and year are otherwise identical. Second textual point: the first edition does not narrate the theft and recovery of Sancho's ass (the 'hurto del rucio'); the second Cuesta 1605 edition inserts those passages, awkwardly placed, and Cervantes himself blames the printers for the muddle in Part II. The 1605 first is notoriously full of typographic and chapter-numbering errors, a consequence of hasty Spanish printing. Copies are census-tracked; only roughly 25-30 complete or near-complete copies of the 1605 first are recorded worldwide.

## Is this the true first?
The Madrid Spanish originals (Cuesta 1605 / 1615) precede everything in every language and are the true first. Both the Spanish first and the first English are collected. The first English — and the first translation into ANY language — is Thomas Shelton's 'The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha', London: printed by William Stansby for Ed. Blount and W. Barret, 1612 (STC 4915); Shelton's Part II followed, London, printed for Edward Blount, 1620. A trap worth knowing: Shelton did not translate from either authorized Madrid 1605 edition but from the unauthorized Spanish edition published at Brussels in 1607. The 18th-century Motteux (1700-03) and Jarvis (1742) versions are 'first thus' translations only, never the first edition of the work.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club era applies to the 17th-century printings. The contemporary traps are the 1605 piracies — two Lisbon editions and one Valencia edition (approbation dated 18 July 1605) — all dated 1605 and all regularly mislabeled as 'the 1605 first edition'; none is. In practice essentially every copy encountered is a 19th- or 20th-century English translation or an illustrated reprint (Motteux, Jarvis, Ormsby, Limited Editions Club/Heritage, Easton, Franklin), i.e. first-thus at best.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha)* by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/don-quixote-el-ingenioso-hidalgo-don-quixote-de-la-mancha
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.