1605

1605 is the year the First Part of Don Quixote reached readers, turning a manuscript of uncertain age and delayed publication into a conspicuous success in print. The book’s swift circulation challenged the idea that it had been received coldly and began a public history that Cervantes would later weave into the sequel itself.

From manuscript to publication

The precise circumstances and date of composition remain uncertain in the account. Cervantes’s preface led readers to conclude that he conceived the book, and at least began writing it, while in prison; this was considered likely, but the surviving evidence did not establish when the manuscript was completed. By the time it was offered to a publisher, it may already have been waiting for some time.

Francisco Robles eventually bought the work, but showed little confidence in its prospects beyond Castile: he did not pay to secure copyright in Aragon or Portugal. Printing was completed in December, and the book appeared with the new year, in 1605. The publication date therefore marks the point at which the work entered the market, not a securely known date for its conception or composition.

Early circulation and reception

The book’s arrival prompted preparations for pirated editions in Lisbon and Valencia. A second edition was also planned with the additional copyrights for Aragon and Portugal, which Cervantes secured in February. These developments suggest that the work’s initial reach was substantial enough to prompt both unauthorized competition and an effort to extend its protected circulation beyond Castile.

The claim that Don Quixote was first received coldly is contradicted by this early response. Some aristocratic readers welcomed the book warmly, while other sections of the aristocracy were unlikely to enjoy its mockery of their favored romances and ideals. Its success did not mean universal approval: literary divisions shaped how the work was received, and Cervantes’s satirical barbs at Lope de Vega’s vanities and affectations accompanied Lope’s own public sneers at Cervantes and the book.

A date remembered from the sequel

The significance of 1605 becomes clearer in the later account of the book’s growing readership. In the Second Part, the Bachelor Samson Carrasco describes Don Quixote as circulating among readers of different ages and appearing in noble households; the lean horse Rocinante has become recognizable enough to serve as a popular allusion. This is a retrospective picture presented within the fiction, but it makes the First Part’s passage from publication to cultural familiarity part of the sequel’s subject.

Cervantes also connects the book’s continuing fame to the unauthorized continuation by Avellaneda. By October or November 1614, while Cervantes was working on the Second Part, that rival volume had appeared. In the later dedicatory address, Cervantes jokes that even the Emperor of China has asked for Don Quixote and requested that it be taught at a college, while explaining that he is pressing ahead partly to counter the other Don Quixote. The joke looks back to the success launched in 1605 and shows how publication had made authorship, imitation, and the book’s public identity inseparable.