as translated by Michael Alpert

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...