Don Quixote in Eighteenth-Century British Book Culture

The portraitist, history painter and book illustrator Francis Hayman (1708–1776) produced the drawings for the twenty-eight engravings illustrating the first edition of Smollett’s translation of Don Quixote (1755), which also included editorial notes and a ‘Life of Cervantes’ by Smollett. In the late 1760s, Hayman also painted a series of oil sketches relating to his Don Quixote book illustrations. This chapter looks closely at some of Hayman’s drawings and paintings, in relation both to Smollett’s work and that of their contemporary, the painter and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764). It contextualizes Smollett and Hayman’s 1755 illustrated edition within an examination of the impact of Don Quixote on eighteenth-century British book and visual culture.