In 1885, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton self-published her novel under the pseudonym C. Loyal: C for Ciudadano and Loyal for Leal, or Ciudadano Leal, “loyal citizen,” a nineteenth-century signature on official correspondence in Mexico. Later that year, Samuel Carson & Co. in San Francisco published a second edition of the novel. As Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita write in their 1992 introduction and notes to the Arte Público Press edition of The Squatter and the Don, the two editions are essentially the same except for the first paragraph in Chapter XXXV, “The Fashion of Justice in San Diego.” Originally, Ruiz de Burton’s description of the abused Goddess of Justice was harsher and more pointed in its criticism of judges and lawyers like Lawlack and Roper. For the second edition, the author softened this critique.
The text of this Modern Library edition is set from the second edition of 1885. We have retained the original spellings, such as the occasional use of “O” instead of “Oh,” but we have silently corrected obvious errors in punctuation, standardized the use of hyphenation on words such as “to-day” and “to-morrow,” and rectified typographical errors.