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In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west and stumbled upon an unknown continent that came to be called America. Seven years later The Comedia of Calisto and Melibea (or as it later became known, La Celestina) was published in Spain, and instantly became a national best seller. More than sixty editions appeared during the following century, and the work became so popular that, as one scholar has said: "There could have been no one who was capable of reading who did not read La Celestina." La Celestina, published anonymously in 1499, in later editions revealed the author as one Fernando de Rojas, a descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity and student at the University of Salamanca, who tells us that he "found" the first act and completed the rest of it during fifteen days of vacation from his studies. It first appeared with sixteen acts, and later with twenty-one, the additional acts being written at the request of the author's friends. Rojas finished his studies and became a lawyer in the nearby town of Talavera. He married, had several children, eventually became Lord Mayor of the town, and died in 1541. To our knowledge he never wrote another work. This novel, written in dialogue form, is considered one of the great masterpieces of Spanish literature. Composed during the rich flowering of the Renaissance, La Celestina contains not only references to figures of Greek and Roman culture, but also shows the influence of courtly literature. Alongside this, and towering over this, is a plot that carries with it tragedy of the type found later in Romeo and Juliet, along with ribald comedy. There is, for instance, the hilarious scene where the shy servant, Parmeno, addresses the prostitute, Areusa, with courtly phrases: "My lady, God keep your charming presence." And she replies in the same tone: "Gentle Sir, I bid you welcome." All this just before he hops into bed with her. Later the stable-boy, Sosia, acts much the same way with this same prostitute that he sees as a very beautiful woman. He describes his meeting with her: "bless me but I was ready to give it to her two or three times. Except that I was overcome with shame... When she moved around, she gave off a smell of musk perfume, while I stank of the manure I had on my shoes." Centurio, the cowardly braggart, explains to the girls the entire "repertoire" of swordplay ("seven hundred and seventy types of death") that he could use to take revenge on Calisto, and as soon as they leave, he finds a way to do nothing at all. And then come the tragic elements that begin with the murder of Celestina, the beheading of Calisto's servants, the accidental death of Calisto, and Melibea's speech to her father before she leaps to her own death on the stones below. La Celestina was almost immediately translated into French, Italian, German, English and Latin. The success of this work has continued down to the present day, with new translations appearing in Czech, Croatian, Hebrew, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian during just one twenty-five year period in the twentieth century. The present edition gives the text in Spanish and in English on facing pages. The Spanish text is based on the orthography of the printings of Burgos, 1499, Toledo, 1500, and Valencia, 1514, and is richly illustrated with woodcuts taken from those early editions. Included are endnotes explaining the copious proverbs and classical references found interspersed throughout the text.

Afternoon of the Dinosaur, by Cristina Peri Rossi, one of the most important Spanish writers of our time, was first published in 1976. Due to censorship in Spain under Franco, it was initially distributed only in Latin America. Then, in 1984, it was published again by Plaza y Janés (Barcelona), and in 2008 it was reissued by Tropo Editores (Zaragoza). This volume is composed of eight lyrical and powerful short stories bound together by themes of alienation and generational conflict in the modern world. According to the author, "the stories are all connected by a sense of persecution and by the solidarity that this sometimes creates between two persons." The first, "From Brother to Sister," deals with the yearnings of love of an adolescent for his sister. In the second, "At the Beach," a young couple encounters a child who both mystifies and troubles them with her extraordinary questions. With "The Influence of Edgar A. Poe on the Poet Raimundo Arias," we find the deep-felt sense of exile of Peri Rossi herself. Two pieces of this collection that carry the title "Simulacrum" give us a science-fiction world of space travel in which human feelings are lost. As the author says, "the final word of the tale is 'mercy, ' (it is a sense of) pity that I feel for myself and for all human beings, because we are condemned to die, to suffer dictatorships, because we are condemned many times to oppression, and we need to seek out, in the midst of this suffering, our fellow men." As for the title story of this collection, "The Afternoon of the Dinosaur," the author confesses that her dreams, at the time of the military dictatorship in Montevideo when people simply disappeared," were often haunted by terrifying dinosaurs. The dinosaur, for her, symbolized fear, danger, the threat of the government. She wanted to tame the dinosaur, to change it into a loving character. It was only after she wrote this story that dinosaurs disappeared from her dreams. Julio Cortázar writes: "Cristina Peri Rossi is not only aware of the hells of this world, she understand the lures of paradise. Her exquisite prose projects her readers into a surrealistic realm that is filled with forbidden yet fascinating choices." In his introduction to the Spanish version of "La tarde del dinosaurio," he says: "In three of the stories from this book the children will lay bare the world of those who claim to control it, and will reduce it to a laughingstock of truth... Brothers and sisters, queens and slaves, false adults incapable of accepting the laws of the game, people that an Aubrey Beardsley or an Egon Schiele would have drawn with the perverse perfection of sterile desire, of a pursuit whose sole incentive is that of not catching the prey, whether it be named Patricia or Alexandra, Igor or Alina. False adults, for the simple reason that adults are false. And the adolescent turns to its past in a last, desperate act of resistance; but its sex and its hair and its voice drag it to the peak that the boy of the dinosaur contemplates in final horror. Now there are no victims or assassins in those rooms of the house; the last of its visitors is able only to utter one useless word: Mercy."

Sometime around 1550 a little book, published anonymously, appeared in Spain. It purported to relate the life of one Lazarillo of Tormes, whose only goal since childhood had been to fill his empty belly. For its wit, unerring characterizations, realistic observation, and its sage acceptance of life, the tale went straight to the hearts of all Spain. Immediately translated into other languages, it was soon being read with delight throughout Europe. A masterpiece had been born, and for centuries it has endeared itself to new generations of readers and has won the praise of critics of every school and taste. In this modern but faithful version by Robert S. Rudder the reader will be able to read the entire book as it was experienced by the readers of the sixteenth century. Several imitators attempted to fill their purses by riding on the shirttails of that beloved book, using Lazarillo's name as part of their title. Of them all, the only one that can lay claim to literary merit of its own is the "Second Part of the Life of Lazarillo of Tormes" (1620) written by Juan de Luna. This author was a political and religious refugee in France, who spent his last years as a Protestant minister in London. Juan de Luna may have had to flee from the Inquisition because of his bitterness toward the clergy. About this attitude he leaves us in no doubt; in his novel the satire on the church is blunt and devastating. But this venom did not hinder Juan de Luna from telling a witty, entertaining, spicy story. The unknown author of the First Part, who starts his tale by having the narrator state frankly that writers want glory - "they want to be rewarded...with people seeing and reading their works, and if there is something worthwhile in them, they would like some praise" - not only gained his wish but initiated a literary genre that is still very much alive, the picaresque novel. To this tradition belong Tom Jones, Huckleberry Finn, Moll Flanders, and in our own day, The Tin Drum. This edition is superbly illustrated with seventy-three drawings by the Dutch painter Leonard Bramer (1596-1674). The drawings, reproduced here by permission, are in the keeping of the Graphische Sammlung in Munich.