“Benito Perez Galdos: (1843-1920) Spanish novelist. In the 1870s he began a cycle of 46 short historical novels, Episodios nacionales (1873-1912), that earned him comparison with Honore de Balzac and Charles Dickens. Some of his finest works chronicle contemporary Spain, including The Disinherited Lady (1881) and his masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87), a study of two unhappily married women. His earlier works showed a reforming zeal and anticlericalism, but after the 1880s he displayed greater sympathy for Spain and it idiosyncrasies, as in Nazarin (1895), Compassion (1897), and a series featuring the character Torquemada. He also wrote plays, some very popular, but of less artistic value, He was regarded as Spain’s greatest novelist since Miquel de Cervantes.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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