Diego de Silva y Mendoza, Count of Salinas and Marquis of Alenquer (1564-1630), was the son of Ruy Gómez de Silva and Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, Princes of Éboli. Following in the footsteps of his illustrious father, who had been Philip II’s principal councillor for many years, Diego served three kings — Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV — in various posts that had mainly to do with Portugal: Councillor, then President, of the Council of Portugal in Madrid (1605-1616), and finally Viceroy and Captain General of Portugal in Lisbon (1617-1622). At the same time, he was a celebrated poet, a courtier, landowner in Spain and Portugal, husband and father. All of these facets are reflected in the more than 520 letters and memorials here carefully edited and annotated by Trevor Dadson, a leading expert in the life and poetry of Salinas. The resulting epistolary is testimony not only of the life of one of the most intelligent, shrewd and best prepared Spanish politicians of the early modern period but also of Iberian and international politics during the first third of the seventeenth century.

J. Dadson (1947–2020) was Professor of Hispanic Studies at Queen Mary University of London and the author of numerous books and articles on the literature, textual criticism and sociocultural history of the Spanish Golden Age. Among his many publications are the following recent monographs: Gabriel Bocángel y Unzueta, Obras completas (2001), Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV-XVIII) (2007; 2nd edn, 2015), Historia de la impresión de las Rimas de Lupercio y Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (2010), Diego de Silva y Mendoza. Poeta y político en la corte de Felipe III (2011, with Helen Reed) Epistolario e historia documental de Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, princesa de Éboli (2013), and Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern Spain. Old Christians and Moriscos in the Campo de Calatrava (2014). In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2015 he received the Encomienda of the Order of Isabel la Católica for his services to Spanish culture.