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Armando Palacio Valdés was born in 1853 in the province of Asturias. He is one of the most prominent contemporary novelists of Spain. He belongs to that school of writers known as naturalists, and in the opinion of some, he deserves to stand at the head of that school. His novels treat of contemporary Spanish life.
Although modern realism triumphed in Spain only with the coming of Fernán Caballero's La gaviota in 1848, the ground was prepared in advance by several writers, the more important of whom are Larra, Estébanez de Calderón and Mesonero Romanos.
And Spain has to-day a group of vigorous young writers, who give promise of carrying the work forward to an even greater future. Spanish America has done little work of merit in prose fiction, but it has produced much lyric poetry. If we may believe the statements of Juan Valera in his Cartas americanas, the Spanish Americans have written more good verse than have the English Americans.
A realistic literature, therefore, that describes accurately the doings and the environment of Spanish villagers must be regional: it can not be broadly national. Pereda was, perhaps, the most provincial, the least cosmopolitan, of modern Spanish writers. An old-fashioned hidalgo, or country gentleman, he rarely left his ancestral home at Polanco, and if he did go away, he was always sorry for it.
But to those who wish to study in these stories the growth of contemporary Spanish fiction, it is suggested that the authors be taken up in the order in which they are given in the Introduction. To the stories by Spanish authors have been added two by Spanish-American writers, the one a native of Costa Rica, the other of Chile. These stories are excellent and well worth reading.
The most forceful of the younger writers of Spain is the Valencian BLASCO IBÁ
His best stories are probably El sombrero de tres picos, El capitán Veneno, and some of his Novelas cortas. Of the lesser writers of stories of manners and customs, Antonio de Trueba and Narciso Campillo should receive especial mention. A journalist, poet, and writer of short stories, Trueba is best known as an interpreter of Basque life.
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