John Stevens (translator)

John Stevens (c. 1662 – 1726) was an English captain, Hispanist and translator. He is known for his translation of Don Quixote in 1700.

He was born in London, where his father was a page to Catherine of Braganza, and was educated by Benedictines at Douai, around 1675. He was bilingual, speaking Spanish from infancy, presumably with his mother. He served in the forces sent to quell Monmouth's Rebellion, and went with Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon to Dublin in 1685. He then through the Hyde connection became a tax official at Welshpool.Roman catholic and Jacobite, he fought in the Irish Williamite War and was at the siege of Limerick, and kept a valuable diary of the conflict.

Before 1695 Stevens had settled again in London. From that time till his death he was engaged in translations, and historical and antiquarian compilations. He was editor of the British Mercury from 1712 to 1715. He died on 27 October 1726.

Stevens's first publication, an abridged translation in three volumes of Manuel de Faria y Sousa's Portuguesa Asia, appeared in 1695, with a dedication to Catharine of Braganza. In 1698 he produced a translation and continuation from 1640 of the same author's History of Portugal. His English version of Don Francisco Manuel de Mello's The Government of a Wife was issued in 1697. It was dedicated to Don Luis da Cunha, the Portuguese envoy. In the same year Stevens published a version of Quevedo's Fortune in her Wits, or the Hour of all Men. He issued in 1707 a translation of the collected comedies of Quevedo, which was republished in 1709 and in 1742. A collection of Spanish works translated and adapted by him appeared in the same year under the title of The Spanish Libertines. It consisted of Perez's Justina, the Country Jilt; Celestina, the Bawd of Madrid, by F. de Rojas; Gonzales, the most arch and comical of scoundrels, by himself; and D'Avila's comedy, An Evening's Intrigue, adapted by the translator.

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