Spanish Novel History

THE NOVELS, 1840-1890

WE have now come to the principal achievements of
Spanish literature in the last half of the nineteenth
century, its novels. As the harvest of Spanish novels
is very rich, and as they are recent and have been
much discussed, I shall do little more than call the
roll.

Cecilia Böhl de Faber ( 1796-1877) was the
daughter of a German father and a Spanish mother.
Ticknor knew the father when he was Hanseatic
consul at Cadiz. She was born in Switzerland. She
changed her name several times by marriage, but
always, I think, made use of the pseudonym "Fernán
Caballero." She wrote her first novel in German, her
second in French; but in spite of her cosmopolitan
relations and attainments, she is thoroughly Spanish.
She says herself: "I have tried to give a truthful,
genuine, exact picture of Spain and its social life, to
describe the inner life of our people, their beliefs, their
feelings, their wit. . . . La novela no se inventa, se
observa. . . . And I have tried to do more: to re­
vivify what is spiritual, sacred, tender, and sublime
in our religious practices; to rehabilitate our genuine
old Spanish ways, our character, our national senti­
ment." Here, then, was a double purpose of realism
and reform. Spanish critics are in accord that nobody
has depicted better than she intimate family scenes

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Publication Information: Book Title: Spain: A Short History of Its Politics, Literature, and Art from Earliest Times to the Present. Contributors: Henry Dwight Sedgwick - author. Publisher: Little, Brown. Place of Publication: Boston. Publication Year: 1926. Page Number: 337.