Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza. Recopilada por Isidro de Robles … En la qual se refieren los tragicos sucessos de un caballlero ingles, llamado Eduardo, por los amores de una dama inglesa, llamada Isabela, muger de el almirante de Inglaterra, y de el dichoso fin, que tuvieron sus trabajosos quebrantos, como vera el curioso lector (Sevilla: en la imprenta Castellana, y Latina de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, [1720?])

[Famous and exemplary novel, there is no revenge against love. Collected by Isidro de Robles … In which are told the tragic experiences of an English gentleman named Edward for love of an English lady named Isabella, wife of the Admiral of England, and of the happy end to their sufferings, as the curious reader will see.]

Title page of Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza (Sevilla, [1720]) RB.23.a.40411

The plot: In England, the good English knight Eduardo is imprisoned for injuring the Scottish Ambassador in a joust. In prison, he falls in love with a picture of Isabella. The Admiral of England replaces Eduardo in a joust and King Ricardo (The Lionheart) rewards him with Isabella’s hand. Eduardo spies on Isabella. Her Spanish maid Rosaura sings a song in Spanish which Eduardo had written. Isabella knows Eduardo by reputation. The Admiral comes home unexpectedly and Eduardo kills him. He flees to the court of Alfonso VIII in Toledo. Eduardo rescues Alfonso when he is ambushed by Baron Belflor. Isabella wants revenge on her husband’s murderer. Dagger in hand, she finds Eduardo asleep and ‘like Psyche’, falls in love with his beauty. Love overcomes revenge. She imprisons him to protect him from execution. King Richard visits Alfonso to plan a crusade. Eduardo reminds Richard he saved his life and asks him to make Isabella pardon him. Isabella says she wants revenge, but asks the Princess to ask the King for a pardon. The King tells Isabella to pardon Eduardo and marry him.

Not an entirely accurate picture of medieval England: hunting can only take place early in the morning because of ‘the rigour of the Sun’; they arm themselves with pistols.

As you might imagine, the importance of this text is bibliographical rather than literary.

This blog celebrates the acquisition of a small book. By small book I mean a chapbook, made by folding one or two sheets twice to make a pamphlet. These were news reports (relaciones), ballads, plays (including monologues excerpted from plays, called ‘relaciones de comedia’: see Gabriel Andrés) and novels, plus works of popular religion. By novel I mean what Dr Johnson meant: ‘a small tale, generally of love’. Among famous readers of Spanish chapbooks were Samuel Pepys and Queen Christina of Sweden.

The subjects of ballads, plays and novels often overlapped (we might note the sympathetic servants in our novel), and so did their form of publication. There was a ban on printing plays and novels (from 1625 to 1634), which the publishers tried to circumvent by passing their sometimes sensational stories off as exemplary history. (Our book is ‘exemplar’ and ‘tragico’.) People were still reading these 17th-century texts in the 18th century.

Ballads, plays and novels could be published in collections (single- or multi-authored) or as chapbooks (pliegos sueltos [‘independent quires’] or when appropriate, [comedias] sueltas [‘independent plays’])).

Separately printed ballads and plays are much more common than separately printed novels, which I think it’s safe to say are rare: hence the interest of this item. Today’s book is a novel, but it has a woodcut and layout in two columns which make it resemble a ballad. And its title could be a play.

It’s difficult to know who the author is. Ripoll (pp. 54-57) confuses our No hay contra el amor venganza with El amor en la venganza by the fertile Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584-c.1648). Our text was first published in the collection Varios efectos de amor en onze novelas exemplares … recogidas por Isidro de Robles (1666; with reprints up to 1760) (Ripoll, pp. 165-66). So Robles is just the compiler. This suelta appears to be the only separate printing of No hay contra el amor venganza.

Alonso de Alcalá y Herrera wrote five lipogrammatic stories which were included in Varios efectos de amor of 1666: this explains why someone has written his name in pencil at the head of the title page.

The printer, Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla printed large books and small books. Indeed, he printed in Latin as well as Spanish. It’s tempting to suppose that the small books, quick and easy to print and sold at low prices but in large numbers, subsidised the bigger books (Griffin). Small books are rarely dated, but big books are (indeed, it was a legal requirement) and approximate dates for one can be deduced from the other.

Hermosilla printed a good number of comedias sueltas, all undated (Whitehead, STC, III, 51; Escudero, pp. 616-17). Novelas sueltas from his press are rare, but two are known, to which ours should now be added. The Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, has a novela suelta:

Alcalá y Herrera, Alonso de ?

Novela famosa, y exemplar, la Peregrina Hermitaña, escrita sin la letra O, recopilada por Isidro de Robles. (Seville, [s.a.]) 32 p.; 4º. CCPB000038807-6

To which (Ripoll, p. 166) adds Novela famosa y burlesca; Los tres maridos burlados … (Seville, [s.a.])

Hermosilla indeed advertises on the last page that he specialises in small books:

En la imprenta castellana, y latina, de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, Mercader de libros en Calle de Genova, donde se hallarán otras muchas Relaciones, Romances, Entremeses, y comedias, corregidas fielmente por sus legitimos Originales.

[In the Spanish and Latin press of Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, bookseller in the Calle de Génova, where many other newsbooks [or monologues], ballads, interludes and plays may be found, faithfully corrected against their genuine originals]

Harold Whitehead records just one dated book printed by Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla: El león prodigioso of 1732 (item G162; shelfmark 1456.f.7); significantly this is a book and not a chapbook. Whitehead ascribes a date of [c. 1720] to many of Hermosilla’s comedias sueltas, and I follow his lead.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References/further reading:

Gabriel Andrés, ‘Relaciones de comedia en Cerdeña: los pliegos del taller sevillano de los Hermosilla (1684-1730) en la Biblioteca Universitaria de Cagliari’, Janus, 2 (2013), 48-73. Available at Researchgate.net

Francisco Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense (Madrid, 1894). 11906.c.1.

Clive Griffin, ‘Literary Consequences of the Peripheral Nature of Spanish Printing in the Sixteenth Century’, in Literary cultures and the material book, edited by Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison (London, 2007), pp. 207-14. YC.2008.a.8654

Begoña Ripoll, La novela barroca: catálogo bio-bibliográfico (1620-1700) (Salamanca, 1991). YA.2003.a.1512

Barry Taylor, ‘Exemplarity in and around the Novelas ejemplares’, Modern Language Review, 110 (2015), 456-72. P.P.4970.ca.

H. G. Whitehead, Eighteenth-century Spanish chapbooks in the British Library: a descriptive catalogue (London, 1997). YC.1997.a.2900

H. G. Whitehead, Short-title catalogue of eighteenth-century Spanish books in the British Library (London, 1994) 2725.e.2791