A rare early nineteenth-century Spanish pamphlet, from the presses of a woman printer in Seville, containing a variation of Cervantes’ folk tale, “La Gitanilla de Madrid”.
‘La Gitanilla’ tells the story of Estela, a beautiful and talented young Romani woman who falls in love with a nobleman and discovers her aristocratic heritage. First published in 1613, at a time when the Spanish Inquisition enforced strict censorship, Cervantes’ tale appeared in an oppressive literary climate shaped by Crown and Church. Although Cervantes was not the first to write about the child-stealing ‘gypsy’ motif, “La Gitanilla de Madrid” was the tale that popularized this trope in Spanish literature.
Little is known about the printer, Vazquez’ widow; the earliest imprint from her presses dates from 1797, and the latest from 1834, and several Sevillian newspapers also issued from them (El Fanal, La Verdad and La Gazeta Diaria de Londres en Sevilla) (Mujeres, p.58).
‘Mujeres impresoras: siglos XIV-XIX’, Biblioteca Nacional de España (2012)
