Mateo Alemán

Mateo Alemán y de Enero (Seville, Spain, 1547 – 1615? in Mexico) was a Spanish novelist and writer.
He graduated at Seville University in 1564, studied later at Salamanca and Alcalá, and from 1571 to 1588 held a post in the treasury; in 1594 he was arrested on suspicion of malversation, but was speedily released. According to some authors, he was descended from Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism after 1492, and one of his forebears had been burned by the Inquisition for secretly continuing to practise Judaism. In 1599, he published the first part of Guzmán de Alfarache, a celebrated picaresque novel which passed through not less than sixteen editions in five years; a spurious sequel was issued in 1602, but the authentic continuation did not appear until 1604.
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