The Remarkable Life of Don Diego

First issued in parts from 1743, this picaresque autobiography recounts the life of Diego de Torres Villarroel of Salamanca in six stretches that follow his decades. The son of a bookseller, he runs through school, flight, odd trades, almanac-making, and a chair of mathematics, with an exile in Portugal and a return to university and Madrid society. He presents himself as trickster, scholar, priest, and patient of his own fortune. Street and classroom scenes of eighteenth-century Spain supply the texture. The book is a first-person life in the picaresque mode, not a novel about a different Don Diego.

Quarter bound in black buckram, marbled paper boards. Maroon patterned and titled dust-jacket. Green slipcase.