Introduction

The present English version, authorized by the publishers and heirs of M. Merimee, is based on the third French Edition.

New material of two sorts has been added, however. First, the translator has been allowed to utilize an annotated, interleaved copy of the Precis, 1922, in which the author, and after his death his son Henri, himself a distinguished Hispanist, had set down material for the next revision.

This accounts for many inserted names and phrases, and some paragraphs. Second, the translator has rewritten and added with some freedom.