don-quixote

Originally published in 2010 when I lived in Madrid, Spain. The photo is of an eight maravedí coin from 1607, during the reign of King Felipe III, minted in Segovia.

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What did Miguel de Cervantes earn from Don Quixote de la Mancha? We don’t know, but we have enough clues to try to guess. Cervantes was poor before it was published and poor after it was published, so it wasn’t a huge amount of money. Everyone agrees on that.

A little background

Don Quixote de la Mancha was published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615. Cervantes didn’t plan on a second part, but after another author wrote a continuation, he decided to write his own.

In 1604, Cervantes was 50 years old and living in Valladolid. He had written a short story about Don Quixote, and he presented the idea of a novelization to publisher Francisco de Robles, who agreed and urged Cervantes to get it ready fast. Then the book was hastily edited (which explains the many errors in the text), printed on cheap paper with worn type, and rushed to the market.

Probably no one considered it a universal masterpiece, but the first edition of 1,000 copies sold well — in fact, it was immediately pirated in Lisbon. Cervantes had already won notice as a playwright, and this book, which satirized popular novels of chivalry and contemporary society, cemented his reputation as a major writer (at age 50, which was old at the time).

He had received a 10-year royal privilege to print Don Quixote, which he sold to Robles for an unknown amount; the paperwork was lost. But he had sold an earlier novel, La Galatea, to Robles’ grandfather for 1,336 reales, of which he eventually only received 1,086.

Nieves Concostrina, a journalist with Radio Nacional de España, reported in the series Acércate al Quijote that he received no more than 100 ducados (which equals 1,100 reales or 37,500 maravedíes) for the copyright, which she estimates as worth only about €200 today.

Daniel Eisenberg, the former editor of Cervantes, the scholarly journal of the Cervantes Society of America, wrote that he probably received 1,500 reales (51,000 maravedíes), which he says would have been worth 500,000 pesetas in 1992, or €5,503.72 today. That’s better, but still not a lot of money.

Maravedíes today

Their estimates in reales are reasonably close, so that’s a start. I don’t know how they arrived at modern currency, though. Converting antique currencies into present-day currencies can never be done well because, among other problems, the things that money can buy have changed. Cervantes never bought gasoline, for example. I don’t buy firewood.

But both Cervantes and I live in Madrid, and we both buy food. The Instituto de Cervantes, in its on-line footnotes to Quixote, has published the prices of several food items in New Castille in 1605. So let’s go shopping and do some math.

• A half-kilo of mutton sold for 28 maravedíes, according to the footnote. Mutton is no longer sold here, but a half-kilo of hamburger goes for €2.50 at my local grocery store. On that basis, 1 maravedí equals €0.089

• A chicken, 55m. The average price according to government’s Food Price Observatory’s latest statistics is €3.52. 1m = €0.064

• A dozen oranges, 54m. Food Price Observatory average is €4.26. 1m = €0.079

• Laying hen, 127m. Common price in local ads is €12. 1m = €0.094

• A ream of writing paper, 28m. A packet of A4 110 gr. Pioneer brand paper at Carlin, a major chain, €2.93. 1m = €0.104

• A dozen eggs, 63m. Food Price Observatory average is €1.33. 1m = €0.021 (This figure is an outlier, as you can see. The price of eggs has gone down a lot over the centuries. These days agribusinesses produce eggs in giant factory farms. Things change. For the better?)

The average of all these prices gives us 1m = €0.075. A weighted average would be better, I know, but how many laying hens do most of us buy now, so how much should they “weigh”? Not to mention the disparity in egg prices.

If we go with 7.5 euro cents per maravedí, the price of a copy of Quixote, set by law at 290.5 maravedíes, would have been €21.78. That sounds a bit low. We know that books were expensive items in those days. But that price was “en papel,” in paper — that is, as loose pages. The purchaser had to have them bound and covered at additional expense.

On the other hand, most people earned rather little. They would have spent a big part of their income, perhaps most of it, merely on food. According to the novel, Don Quixote spent three-fourths of his income on food for his household, and they ate frugally. A book would have taken a big bite out of tight budgets.

Not a get-rich quick scheme

If we accept that exchange rate — 1 maravedí = 7.5 euro cents — then Concostrina’s estimate of 37,400 maravedíes yields €2,805. Eisenberg’s 51,000 maravedíes yields €3,825.

It’s not a lot. Cervantes seems to have had income from other sources at the time. I hope so.

Those of you in the United States may be wondering what this is in US dollars. Yeesh. The dollar-euro exchange rate fluctuates daily, and there’s a worldwide currency war going on right now. On November 1, 2010, the value was USD$3,911.24 for Concostrina’s estimate and USD$5,333.50 for Eisenberg’s, but that will change. Go to Oanda for the latest numbers.

What Cervantes thought

In Book II, Chapter LXII of Don Quixote, our knight-errant meets an author in a printing shop in Barcelona and has this conversation:

“I would venture to swear,” said Don Quixote, “that you, sir, are not known in the world, which always begrudges its reward to rare wits and praiseworthy labors. What talents lie wasted there! What genius thrust away into corners! What worth left neglected! … But tell me, sir, are you printing this book at your own risk, or have you sold the copyright to some bookseller?”

“I print at my own risk,” said the author, “and I expect to make a thousand ducados at least with this first edition, which is to be of two thousand copies that should sell in the blink of an eye at six reales apiece.”

“A fine calculation you are making!” said Don Quixote. “It seems you don’t know the ins and outs of the printers, and the false accounting that some of them use. I promise you when you find yourself weighed down with two thousand copies, you will feel so careworn that it will astonish you, particularly if the book is unusual and not at all humorous.”

“Then what!” said the author. “Sir, do you wish me to give it to a bookseller who will give three maravedíes for the copyright and think he is doing me a favor? I do not print my books to win fame in the world, for I am already well-known by my works. I want to get something out of it, otherwise fame is not worth a farthing.”

When I lived in Spain, I soon noticed that Miguel de Cervantes and his most celebrated novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha, permeated the culture. Think of Shakespeare in English-speaking realms, then dial it up to 11.

The book changed the way Spain thought about itself. It also made Spain reject any sort of non-realism in fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, for centuries to come.

Published in 1605, Don Quixote tells the story of a poor, elderly nobleman driven mad by the fantasy novels of his day, which depicted brave knights and their dazzling deeds. The nobleman adopts the name Don Quixote and sets off on quests. In chapter VIII he famously mistakes windmills for terrible giants and attacks them. In chapter XLI, he is tricked into believing that an enchanted wooden horse has the power to carry him and his squire Sancho Panza through the sky. (Photo: Engraving from an 1863 edition of Don Quixote by Gustave Doré.)

Cervantes’s novel was written when Spain was in a period of desengaño or “disillusionment” after imperial losses, government bankruptcy, a deadly plague, failed harvests, economic disaster, and the defeat of the Invincible Armada. The nation had attempted to fulfill grand ambitions only to discover that it had been tilting at windmills. The novels that Cervantes’s fictional character read were real books that had, a generation earlier, inspired the conquistadors in their exploits: the state of California is named after an imaginary caliphate in one of those books, The Exploits of Esplandian, which was the sequel to Amadis of Gaul (which I translated here). Ambition was not enough, though, and eventually fantasy gave way to sad reality.

Don Quixote changed the way Spain thought about itself — and about literature.

“The problem with Spanish science fiction starts with Quixote,” the editor of a Spanish science fiction ‘zine told me. “Of course, it was a satire of the fantasy adventure novels of its day, and ever since then, perhaps because the satire was so biting, Spain has been the home of realism in fiction.”

School children were taught to scorn those novels of chivalric quests, speculation, and mysterious unknown lands, if they were taught about them at all. Still, a few writers always experimented with science fiction and fantasy, and in the 20th century, books from outside Spain began to inspire a generation.

“Fantastic” literature — science fiction, fantasy, and horror — was slow to gain acceptance as worthy, but in the 1980s and 1990s a growing number of authors encouraged each other and carved out a niche that has since flourished. In the 21st century, books like the Harry Potter and Twilight series appealed to massive numbers of young readers, to the surprise of established publishers and to the delight of the small publishers who had taken a chance on those novels and cashed in. All kinds of publishers took note. The ranks of fandom grew.

Just as in the English-speaking world, Spanish “mainstream” literature discovered it could no longer control access to respectability. Readers had their say.

Sue Burke

What’s a masterpiece worth?

Don Quixote vs. science fiction