Chronicle of the Cid
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. First Edition. First edition in English, the first prose version in any language of the great Spanish realist epic, recounting the heroic life of El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, 1040-1099). 4to (261 x 213mm), pp. [2], [ii], [10], [iii]-xli, [1], map, 468. Rebound in old marbled wrappers matching the page edges. No half title, else complete with fly-titles, errata and advertisements, all notes, and the engraved map of Spain and Portugal. Interior clean but for a light damp stain to the margin of the map. Very good. Item #1347
A thorough rendering, describing the 11th-century deeds of the actual Castilian warrior known as El Cid during the period of the Reconquista that took back northern Spain from the Moors. Its source was the medieval saga Poema del Cid(Cantar del Mio Cid), written around 1140 as a metrical history by an unknown poet (the Homer of Spain), with the earliest surviving manuscript dating from 1207, preserved at Vivar, first published by Tomás Sánchez in 1779. This is the prose version, acclaimed around the world and not amalgamated or fully realized in a previous edition in any language. Southey drew partly from the 1552 Spanish Chronica del Famoso Cavallero Cid Ruydiez Compeador (based on a 13th-century manuscript), partly from the 1604 La Cronica General de España, partly from Corneille's 1637 French play Le Cid, and from other sources besides.
Southey was 34 when he published this, already established as one of the Lake Poets but not yet Poet Laureate (that came in 1813). He had spent years teaching himself Spanish and Portuguese specifically to translate their medieval epics, driven by the conviction that England needed access to the heroic literature of the Iberian peninsula. He was right. The Chronicle became the standard English version and remained so for over a century, introducing El Cid to readers who knew him only vaguely as the subject of Corneille's drama or as a footnote in histories of the Reconquista.
El Cid himself was a mercenary who fought for both Christian and Muslim rulers, a pragmatist in an era being retroactively simplified into a clash of civilizations. The medieval chronicles turned him into a paragon of Christian knighthood; Southey's translation preserves that mythology while letting enough historical detail through to complicate it. The result is a portrait of medieval Spain that is both more romantic and more real than anything available to English readers before 1808.
Price: $425.00