Published anonymously in 1554, Lazarillo de Tormes (Lazarillo is the diminutive, meaning “little Lazaro”) enjoyed immediate popularity and was quickly reprinted by a number of publishers. However, no writer ever took credit for the novel, and not until the early seventeenth century was anyone put forward as the author. The first claim was made in 1605, on behalf of Juan de Ortega, a monk of the Order of St. Jerome, and appeared in a work on the history of that monastic order. Ortega was said to have written the tale while a student in the Castilian city of Salamanca. Ortega’s authorship, however, has been discounted by modern scholars. A more credible claim was made in 1607, when a catalogue listing Spanish writers attributed “the pleasant little book, entitled Lazarillo de Tormes” to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-75), an accomplished statesman, historian, and poet from one of Spain’s most illustrious families (Chandler, p. 194). While, on balance, most modern scholars doubt Mendoza’s authorship, his remains the only name commonly attached to the book, and the question is unlikely to be settled one way or the other. Beyond doubt, however, is the originality and lasting influence of Lazarillo de Tormes, which literary historians view as founding a new genre of literature, the picaresque novel—that is, the novel that features a pícaro or rogue as its central character.
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