This work aims to demonstrate that the critical neglect of sequels has closed a “privileged window into genre formation” (ix) especially given that “sequels offer the most direct and intimate criticism that a work can receive” (vii). In Hinrichs’s opinion, the sequel first develops in early modern Spain, ahead of any other European country, in specific response to certain seminal works such as Cárcel de amor (1492), La Celestina (1499), and La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). He divides the sequel into categories: the “prefix” or prequel, the “in-fix,” the addition of supplemental interior material, and the “suffix,” the sequel proper and whether it is the work of an original writer or continued by another. Utilizing this critieria, Nicolás Núñez’s continuation of Cárcel de amor is both “temporal-in-fix” (he has San Pedro’s protagonist make a detour), and since it is ending material, “textual suffix” (22).

Hinrichs uses his analysis of the sequel as a springboard for commentaries concerning the insistence of modern critics on the absolute primacy and purity of the original work, the importance of contemporary readers’ reaction to the original to the development of the sequel, as well as the editions readers actually read and favored. For instance, in 1496, Núñez’s continuation of the Tratado and San Pedro’s original work were published as one volume and continued to be so for centuries, but modern scholars and editors have now ruthlessly excised Núñez’s work: “They invent the book that they want to read by subtraction just as Núñez did by addition” (4). Hinrichs provides supporting evidence showing that the popularity of Cárcel de amor was due to the hybid San Pedro–Núñez edition and not to the original alone.

The same can also be said about another famous work, the anonymous La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, today considered a masterpiece and required reading, but unpopular in the sixteenth century even before it was banned by the Inquisition, until it was combined by a Dutch printer with its sequel Segundo Lazarillo (1555), also anonymous. Lazarillo’s newfound success was also due to the popularity of another picaresque novel, Mateo de Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599). Explicitly not wanting to be out-sequeled, Guzmán titled his novel “la primera parte” and stated that the second part was already written. But afterwards, nothing appeared except for his own revisions of the original work and so, in 1602, Juan Martí published its sequel to immediate acclaim yet future oblivion. Nevertheless, Hinrichs considers its value immense in that it stopped all rewritings and made the second part of the original Guzmán possible: “Martí gave the world the definitive edition of the first part of Guzmán and the definitive edition of the second” (150). Of course, there is an even more famous sequel by an author responding to a rival sequel, Cervantes’s answer to Fernández de Avellaneda. Hinrichs evaluates the importance of Avellaneda’s contribution to Cervantes’s masterwork, but the focal point of this chapter is not the endless possibilities of sequels, the fact that “no ending can be final” (4), but Cervantes’s success in anticipating any sequels by uniting himself so closely to his character, both in life and in death. In addition, the importance of editions is again stressed; in 1617, the two parts of Don Quixote were first published as one volume and this is the preferred format even today. Other printers ensured the popularity of hybrid original-sequel editions but with the Quixote we have closure; it has become one.

Another example of a blended sequel is the Comedia de Calixto y Melibea (1499), composed of sixteen autos, a sequel according to Hinrichs since Rojas inserted his material “within the primitive argument and text, a temporal and textual in-fix” (22). Later, Rojas published his second “in-fix” sequel when he added five more autos into the original work. But is an “in-fix” like this really a sequel when an author amplifies his own work? The twenty-one auto format of La Celestina is the standard.

Hinrichs’s analysis of the sequel is both readable and well researched, providing a wealth of information to scholars and students especially in the discussion of little-known works. It is also illuminative in both the questions it raises as well as the answers it provides.