This is the extended annotated edition including a detailed biographical primer on the life and works of the author. It is proper to state that the contents, in large measure, consist of the scattered productions of Irving's pen which it was his intention to have brought together and included in the collective edition of his works. It is illustrative of the wars between the Spaniards and the Moors, and consists of the " Legend of Pelayo," the " Chronicle of Count Fernan Gonzalez," the most illustrious hero of his epoch, who united the kingdoms of Leon and Castile, and the " Chronicle of Fernando the Saint," that renowned champion of the Faith, under whom the greater part ,of Spain was rescued from the Moors. " These old Morisco-Spanish subjects," is the language of one of his published letters, " have a charm that makes me content to write about them at half price. They have so much that is high-minded and chivalrous and quaint and picturesque, and at times half comic, about them." In another letter, written about the same time, in 1847, he remarks : " I have now complete, though not thoroughly finished off, the ' Chronicle of Pelayo,' the ' Chronicle of Count Fernan Gonzalez,' the ' Chronicle of the Dynasty of the Ommiades in Spain,' giving the succession of those brilliant sovereigns from the time that the Moslem Empire in Spain was united under the first and fell to pieces at the death of the last of them ; also the ' Chronicle of Fernando the Saint,' with the reconquest of Seville. .....
