Alonso Gerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, keen wit and talented writer, began his literary career in the early years of the seventeenth century and pursued it until his death in 1635. Personal friend of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, he was an esteemed associate of the many writers residing in Madrid. Staunchly individualistic, he was at the same time very much a part of his social and literary milieu. Posterity relegates him to the lesser ranks of those who wrought creatively in the seventeenth century; nevertheless, he has been receiving his due increasingly in the last half-century in studies and editions.