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PEREZ GALDOS, BENITO (1845– )

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Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 140 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PEREZ GALDOS, BENITO (1845– ) , was See also:born at See also:Las Palmas, in the See also:Canary Islands, on the loth of May 1845. In 1863 he was sent to See also:Madrid to study See also:law, drifted into literature, and was speedily recognized as one of the most promising recruits on the Liberal See also:side. Shortly after the Revolution of 1868 he abandoned journalism, and employed fiction as the vehicle for propagating advanced opinions His first novel, La See also:Fontana de erg, was printed in 1871, and later in the same See also:year appeared El Audaz. The reception given to these See also:early essays encouraged the writer to adopt novel-See also:writing as a profession. He had al-ready determined upon the See also:scheme of his Episodios nacionales, a See also:series which might compare with the Comedic lzumairie. Old charters, old letters, old See also:newspapers were collected by him with the minuteness of a See also:German archivist; no novelist was ever more thoroughly equipped as regards the details of his See also:period. See also:Trafalgar, the first See also:volume of the Episodios nacionales, appeared in 1879; the remaining books of this first series are entitled La See also:Cort de See also:Carlos IV., El rg de marzo y el 2 de See also:mayo, Bailen, Napole6n en Chamartin, Zaragoza, See also:Gerona, See also:Cadiz, Juan See also:Martin el Empecinado and La Batalla de Arpiles. As the titles suffice to show, the author's aim was to write the See also:national epic of the 19th See also:century in See also:prose; and he so completely succeeded that, See also:long before the first series ended in 1881, he took See also:rank among the foremost novelists of his See also:time. A second series of Episodios nacionales, beginning with El Equipaje del rey Jose and ending with a tenth volume, Un Faccioso mds y algunas frailes menos, was brought to a See also:close in 1883, and was, like its predecessor, a See also:monument of See also:industry and exact knowledge, of See also:realism and romantic conception; and he carried on the Episodios nacionales into a See also:fourth series, raising the See also:total of volumes to See also:forty. In fecundity and in the See also:power of creating characters, Perez Gald6s vies with See also:Balzac. Parallel with his immense achievement in See also:historical fiction, Perez Gald6s published a collection of romances dealing with contemporary See also:life, its social problems and religious difficulties. Of these the best known, and perhaps the best, are Dona Perfecta (1876); Gloria (1877); La Familia de See also:Leon See also:Rock (1878); Marianela (1878); Fortunata y Jacinta (1887); and See also:Angel Guerra (1891).

Nor does this exhaust his prodigious activity. Besides adapting several of his novels for See also:

stage purposes, he wrote See also:original dramas such as La Loca de la casa (1893), See also:San Quintin (1894), See also:Electra (1900) and Mariucha (1904); but his diffuse, exuberant See also:genius was scarcely accommodated to the See also:convention of theatrical See also:form. Perez Galas became a member of the See also:Spanish See also:Academy, and was also elected to the See also:Cortes; but it is solely as a romancer that his name is See also:familiar wherever Spanish is spoken, as a national novelist of fertile See also:talent, and a most happy humorist who in his eccentrics and oddities is hardly inferior to See also:Dickens. (J.

End of Article: PEREZ GALDOS, BENITO (1845– )

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