This book offers an innovative and distinctive approach to the topic of the origins of the English novel, situating it in a more inclusive and comprehensive context, thus favoring the exchanges between English and non-English sources, and paying special attention to the role played by translation in this process. This study proposes a unique threefold perspective on these transnational encounters which explains the multi-national and hybrid nature of English fiction in the early modern period: translation, the use of oriental traces, sources and motives, and the liaisons between Spanish and English authors / texts which become part of the pan-European narrative tradition.

Sonia Villegas-López is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Huelva, Spain, where she currently teaches BA and MA courses on the early modern novel. Her research interests in the last few years have focused on seventeenth-century prose fiction. Sonia has published chapters and articles in national and international journals and essay collections on the narrative production of Aphra Behn, Mary Pix, Catharine Trotter, Delarivier Manley, Richard Head and Margaret Cavendish, has participated in the research team of two related Projects of Research Excellence since 1996, and has been Principal Investigator of three more, “Early Novel in English, 1660-1700: Database and Textual Editing” (2018-2021), "Women and the Early Novel in English, 1621-1699: The European Context" (2022-2025) and "Constructions of Europe: International Exchanges in the Prose Fiction of the Late Stuart Period: 1660-1714" (2025-2028).