In May 1810, the artist Joseph Farington approached the publishers Thomas Cadell & William Davies with a suggestion from his friend Robert Smirke that a new translation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote be published with illustrations engraved from Smirke's paintings of significant moments in the story. Farington and Smirke had worked together on several of these paintings in the late 1790s and early 1800s, Smirke taking care of the figures, while Farington focused on the landscape, in particular trees, which were his speciality.
The publishers approved of the idea and a translation was begun soon after. This was made by Robert Smirke's daughter, Mary Smirke, and Farington reported regularly in his diary on her progress. Smirke worked from previously published translations of the novel, in particular that of Charles Jervas (published 1742), to which she made corrections, often removing extra passages that were not present in Cervantes’s original. The comprehensive nature of her translation, which was accompanied by extensive notes to the text and a large number of plates and vignettes necessitated that the book would be published in four quarto volumes.
Smirke also wrote a life of Cervantes to preface her work and her manuscript was edited by Sir Thomas Lawrence, who subsequently wrote to Farington on completing his part, to request that his name not appear in the final book for fear that his ignorance of the original Spanish would cause him to face ridicule (see letter in the Royal Academy Archives ref: RAA/LAW/1/246).
Smirke was paid 200 guineas for the project and on 9 April 1818, Farington recorded in his diary that Cadell had approached her shortly before the book went to press to ask if she would approve of her name appearing on the title page. She refused the offer, with her father instead suggesting that it could follow a dedication, perhaps to the Prince Regent, the future George IV. This idea was seen as acceptable, but rather than dedicating the work to the prince, it was instead dedicated to William Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale. George, however, did subsequently acquire the four volumes for his book collection.