In 2001, Dr. Eduardo Urbina, Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M, approached Cushing Library with the idea of building a physical collection in support of his Cervantes Digital Archive website (http://dqi.tamu.edu).  This internationally-renowned internet site provides resources for the study of the life and works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.  Today, the Cushing Library can legitimately lay claim to one of the broadest and most important Cervantes collections in the country.  Built as the basis for a digital archive of Quixote iconography, the collection focuses upon illustrated editions of the Quixote, and contains many of the best-known and most influential editions of the great novel. 

Sample highlights of the Eduardo Urbina Cervantes Project Collection:

Augustin Alonso.  Historia de las hazañas y hechos del ineuncible cauallero Bernardo del Carpio.  Toledo: A costa de Juan Boyer por Pero López de Hayo, 1585.  This epic poem, about a legendary Spanish knight, is mentioned by Cervantes five times in the Quixote.

The History of Don-Qvichote.  London: Printed [by William Stansby] for Edward Blount, 1620.  The first English edition and translation of the Quixote published by Edward Blount, one of the publishers of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623).  [This was also the first illustrated edition of the book.]

Parte Primera y Segvnda del ingenioso hidalgo D. Quixote de la Mancha.  Madrid: Por Melchor Sanchez, 1655.  The third Spanish edition in one volume of both parts of the Quixote. 

Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.  London: J. and R. Tonson, 1738.   The first deluxe edition of the Quixote, printed in four volumes with sixty-seven copperplate illustrations by John Vanderbank.  [1st deluxe ed], 1738

The EUCP can be browsed with the Short Title Index (PDF) which was completed for the 2005 exhibit.

Other Online Resources

The Cervantes Project

has created an innovative and unprecedented digital archive of images based on the textual iconography of the Quixote, i.e. interpretative illustrations included in published editions of the text. The archive provides free access to rare visual resources, restores the traditional connection between word and image, and facilitates a better appreciation and understanding of the impact of Cervantes’ masterpiece through 400 years, from several perspectives: textual, critical, artistic, bibliographical, and historical.

The Don Quixote Iconography Digital Archive is the result of a collaboration and NEH grant about the illustration of the Quixote.

For more information on these online projects, please contact Dr. Eduardo Urbina at e-urbina@tamu.edu