Hernando del Castillo, publisher and book editor, author of the Cancionero General. Very little is known of this man other than he appears to have been a resident of Segovia, although he lived for a time in Valencia. During 1508 and 1509 it is possible that Hernando del Castillo spent part of this time at the court of the Count of Oliva, Serafín de Centelles y Urrea, to prepare his manuscript of the Cancionero general. He probably finished writing the manuscript at the end of 1509, since it is known that he formed a partnership with Cristóbal Cofman and Lorenzo Ganoto on 22 December of the same year, with the aim of printing a thousand volumes of the Cancionero general. Evidence suggests that Castillo must have been a man who travelled a lot.
On 15 January 1511, the printing of the Cancionero General was completed, and Hernando del Castillo's Cancionero General was first sold in Valencia (1511 and 1514) and Toledo (1520 and 1527). By 1535 the compiler had died, so the 1535 edition is already different through the work of other editors. Hernando del Castillo in his Cancionero general, published in Valencia in 1514, carries in his section Obras de burlas provocantes a risa the work of the Pleyto de Manto. These texts abounded in satire and obscenity, which is why some of these pieces were suppressed in later editions.
Like Juan del Encina, Hernando del Castillo was a compiler, an expert in poetry and an innovator. Hernando del Castillo's innovation is that for the first time the collector attempted to give some order to the subject matter, adding 1) works of devotion and morality; 2) canciones; 3) romances; 4) inventions and lyrics of jousters; 5) glosses of motes; 6) villancicos; 7) preguntas and 8) to works of Burlas provocantes a risa.
Hernando del Castillo may have been a Jewish convert. Whatever the case may be, documentary research into the origin of this publisher proved to be totally contradictory and insufficient. For example, some time before his wife, Joana Diez, died and Hernando del Castillo paid his son Pedro del Castillo, on 23 November 1518, an amount from his mother's dowry, and shortly afterwards, on 7 January 1519, Hernando del Castillo joined forces with two other well-known Valencian booksellers, Gaspar Trincher and Joan Uguet.