Emilia Pardo Bazán

Emilia Pardo Bazán
Emilia Pardo Bazán in 1885
Born	Emilia Antonia Socorro Josefa Amalia Vicenta Eufemia Pardo-Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa (1851-09-16)September 16, 1851 La Coruña (Spain)
Died	May 12, 1921(1921-05-12) (aged 69) Madrid (Spain)
Occupations	Novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, literary critic, playwright, translator, editor, professor and lecturer
Spouse	José Antonio de Quiroga y Pérez de Deza
Children	Jaime Quiroga Pardo Bazán, María de las Nieves (Blanca) Quiroga Pardo Bazán and Carmen Quiroga Pardo Bazán
Writing career
Language	Spanish
Genres	Novel, short story, essay, journalism, theater, poetry, travel books
Notable work	Los pazos de Ulloa
Movements	Realism, naturalism and symbolism
Signature

Emilia Pardo-Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa (La Coruña, September 16, 1851 – Madrid, May 12, 1921), Countess of Pardo Bazán, was a Spanish novelist, journalist, essayist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor, professor and lecturer who introduced naturalism into Spain. She was a forerunner in her ideas about women's rights and feminism. She championed the education of women as something fundamental and devoted an important part of her public activity to defending it. Among her literary works, one of the best known is the novel Los pazos de Ulloa (1886).

Among her outstanding works is La cuestión palpitante, a collection of articles that establishes her as one of the principal promoters of naturalism in Spain, a movement that arose as a reaction to Romanticism. Also notable is La Tribuna (1883), considered the first social novel and the first Spanish naturalist novel, in which she brings the proletariat into the Spanish novel for the first time and gives voice and a discourse of her own to a working woman: Amparo, the cigar maker.

She was the first woman member of the Ateneo de Madrid, admitted on February 9, 1905.

Biography

Childhood and education

Emilia Pardo Bazán was the daughter of a noble and very wealthy Galician family of Spain: the Pontifical Count of Pardo-Bazán, José María Pardo-Bazán y Mosquera, a title that Alfonso XIII granted to her in 1908, and Amalia María de la Rúa-Figueroa y Somoza. Her father, convinced of the rights of women, gave her the best education possible, fostering her love of literature. In addition to the residence on Tabernas Street, the family owned two other houses, one near Sangenjo, and the other on the outskirts of La Coruña, the Pazo de Meirás. By the age of nine she was already beginning to show a great interest in writing. In her father's library she found access to a wide variety of reading; she stated that her favorite books at the time were Don Quixote, the Bible and the Iliad. In the house in La Coruña she also read La conquista de México by Antonio de Solís and the Parallel Lives of Plutarch. Books about the French Revolution fascinated her. During the family's winter stays in Madrid, Emilia attended a French school under the patronage of the Royal Household where she was introduced to the literary work of La Fontaine and Jean Racine —which would be especially useful to her later, given her frequent trips to France to connect with the European literary world and to meet and associate with prominent authors such as Victor Hugo—. When she was twelve the family decided to remain in La Coruña during the winters, and there Emilia studied with private tutors. She refused to follow the fashions that limited women to learning music and home economics. She received instruction in all kinds of subjects, with special attention to the humanities and languages, coming to handle French, English and German with ease. She could not attend university, which was barred to women, so she followed scientific and philosophical advances through her father's friends and through books. At fifteen she wrote her first short story (Un matrimonio del siglo XIX), which would be the first of the many short stories she would publish throughout her life.

Marriage and beginnings as a writer

At sixteen she married José Quiroga, also from a family of the lesser nobility; he was nineteen and still a law student. The relationship was looked on favorably by both sets of parents. The wedding was held in 1868 in Meirás, and afterward the couple traveled around Spain. The married couple did not separate from her family, and for years they lived with her parents and traveled around Europe.

Emilia Pardo Bazán

In 1869 she and her husband moved to live in Madrid when her husband, José Quiroga, was elected deputy to the Cortes after the Revolution of 1868. When he gave up his seat, the four of them set out on a journey of several months to France and Italy. Emilia published the chronicles of this journey in the newspaper El Imparcial —later collected in one of her travel books, Por la Europa católica (1901)—, and in them she denounced Spain's need for Europeanization, recommending traveling at least once a year as a means of educating oneself.

A supporter of Carlism during the Revolutionary Sexennium, according to Isaak Pavlovski, Pardo Bazán even went so far as to traffic arms for the supporters of Don Carlos, although years later she would abandon this cause.

House of Emilia Pardo Bazán in La Coruña.

According to documents of the time, her husband José Quiroga was calm and reserved. The couple lived in good harmony; she supported him in his law studies and he valued his wife's intellectual interests. Eight years of marriage passed before they had their first child, Jaime (1876); afterward Blanca (1879) and Carmen (1881) were born. In the following years the marital relationship suffered, more because of her intellectual and literary work than for personal reasons, chroniclers assert.

Monument dedicated to Emilia Pardo Bazán in La Coruña.

In 1876 her first work as a writer became known with Estudio crítico de las obras del padre Feijoo, an essay on this Galician intellectual of the 18th century, for whom the writer always had great admiration, possibly because of his work avant la lettre. With this work she won a prize, competing in this contest against Concepción Arenal. In the same year she published her first book of poems, Jaime, which she dedicated to her newborn son, edited by Francisco Giner de los Ríos.

She contributed to the Catholic magazine La Ciencia Cristiana, from which in 1877 she opposed, with scientistic arguments, the theory of Darwinism on the origin of species.

Her first novel appeared in 1879, Pascual López, autobiografía de un estudiante de medicina, a novel that is at once romantic and realist, set in Santiago de Compostela. She published it in the Revista de España, influenced by her reading of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón and Juan Valera, and still apart from the direction her narrative would take a decade later. The success of the novel led her to continue along the same path, publishing in 1881 Un viaje de novios, about the imprudent marriage of a young woman, the only daughter of a nouveau riche, and a mature man; a hybrid work, in which purely realist elements are mixed with others typical of the thesis novel —in this case, the imprudence of a marriage of convenience— and with profuse descriptions of landscapes and characters, which she takes from Balzac and Daudet, and which already herald her coming interest in naturalism.

It is also in 1881 that the start of the correspondence between Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Pérez Galdós is dated; with him she initially maintained a literary relationship that would develop into a long-lasting romantic intimacy, especially after the separation of Emilia and her husband from 1883 onward, when Galdós was at the height of the triumph of La desheredada and Doña Emilia had just published La cuestión palpitante.

La cuestión palpitante and naturalism

Main article: La cuestión palpitante

Pardo Bazán admired French naturalism but defended Spanish literature and its traditional, authentically Spanish character, which she considered a realism of its own. Although part of her work is considered "naturalist", some specialists hold that what is relevant is the fact that the author introduced into Spain the debate on the proposals of Émile Zola through her essays of journalistic popularization.

Emilia Pardo Bazán in 1887

In 1882 the serialized publication of a series of articles on Émile Zola and the experimental novel began in the magazine La Época; they were later collected in the volume La cuestión palpitante (1883), which established her as one of the principal promoters of naturalism in Spain. In the work, with a prologue by Clarín, she defends the realism "in the Spanish manner" of her contemporaries Galdós and Pereda, and even though her ideas had previously been published in installments, it caused a great scandal.

It was considered the indecent plea of a married and respectable woman in favor of French literature, which in Spain was considered atheistic and pornographic. In reality, although she criticized naturalism, she defended the literary value of Zola, and she was identified with the writer's atheistic and provocative stance.

The work caused a significant uproar and received numerous attacks, as it was considered a manifesto in favor of French pornography and atheistic literature, added to the fact that the author was a woman, a wife and a mother. The defenders of religion and morality found fertile ground for attack, seconded by some people who had even been her friends and admirers, as is the case of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo.

Her husband, «horrified» —as her biographies describe him— by the attacks she received, asked her to stop writing. He was frightened —some biographies of Pardo Bazán explain— that his wife would be identified with the brave and revolutionary female character of her novel La tribuna. Emilia refused. She went on a trip to Italy and they never lived together again. With the scandal, the book's sales increased and so did the writer's notoriety. From France, Zola received the text favorably and expressed surprise that the author was a woman.

The essay La cuestión palpitante and the novel La Tribuna were the origin of her fame as a rebellious and provocative writer.

La Tribuna, the first Spanish naturalist novel

Statue of the cigar makers who appear in La Tribuna.

The former Tobacco Factory that appears in La Tribuna.

In 1883 she published La Tribuna, considered the first social novel and the first Spanish naturalist novel. It tells the story of a working woman and reflects the working environment in a factory, depicting the world of the cigar makers of La Coruña, to which she gives the literary name of Marineda. Amparo, its protagonist, is a working woman with a discourse of her own. The novel narrates the story of a strike, and its protagonist is a brave and resolute young woman who leads the workers' demands, a beautiful woman deceived by a «señorito» who seduces and abandons her; it ends with the popular cries in favor of the Republic at the same time as she gives birth to her child.

Emilia Pardo Bazán brought the proletariat into the Spanish novel for the first time —before Pérez Galdós and Blasco Ibáñez— and describes the industrial methods, forms of work, harsh hours and the working-class environment in years of intense social mobilization, while also carrying out a profound analysis of the female world and of the double working day of women workers who were both mothers and laborers.

From 1884 onward, and after the scandal generated by La cuestión palpitante, Pardo Bazán began to distance herself from «Zolaism», without this implying a disqualification of the doctrine of the master, for whom she would always keep her admiration. «The first symptoms of this distancing become explicit in her Apuntes autobiográficos (1886), when, referring to the book of 1883, she declares that in it she examines «naturalist aesthetics in the light of theology, discovering and rejecting its heretical, determinist and fatalist elements, as well as its tendency toward didactic utilitarianism, and attempting a syncretism that keeps the faith safe» (O. C., III, pp. 722–723). «A further step in that process appears the following year, in her lectures on Russian literature; in them, rather than —as has sometimes been said— replacing in her devotion Zola and French naturalism with Tolstoy and Russian spiritualism, Doña Emilia offers a more totalizing and comprehensive vision of what the proposal of «le roman expérimental» has meant in the European literary movement», notes José Manuel González Herrán, professor of Spanish Literature and a specialist in her work.

In 1885 she published La dama joven, in which she speaks of marital crises, just at the moment when the separation between her and her husband was beginning.

Both the naturalism practiced by Pardo Bazán and that of Galdós, as opposed to the ideological and literary principles of Zola, emphasized the connection of the French school with the Spanish and European realist tradition, which allowed her to come closer to a more conservative and Catholic set of ideas as far as she was concerned, as she never abandoned Catholicism, however much she accepted the ideological bases of social and Darwinist determinism.

The naturalist method culminated in Los pazos de Ulloa (1886–1887), her most famous novel, and the work that established her as one of the great writers of Spanish literature. In it she describes the decadence of the landowning oligarchy that has lost its role of social leadership, the degraded nobility, a pathetic portrait of the decline of the Galician rural world and of the aristocracy. A year later she published its sequel, La madre naturaleza (1887), a naturalist fiction in which she tells of the incestuous love between two young people who do not know they are siblings.

From the 1890s onward Pardo Bazán moved away from naturalism and explored new literary paths such as idealism and symbolism, also European trends. She continued writing novels that would influence Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, one of the great writers of the fin de siècle.

Literary maturity

Portrait of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1896), by the La Coruña painter Joaquín Vaamonde Cornide.

The amicable separation from her husband allowed Pardo Bazán to pursue her literary and intellectual interests freely and without obstacles. She concerned herself not only with literary controversies, but also with taking part in political journalism and fighting tirelessly for the social and intellectual emancipation of women. She published essays such as La revolución y la novela en Rusia (1887) or La mujer española (1890), and her lectures at renowned institutions were so successful that she was frequently invited to repeat them. Such popularity at times earned her enmities among the writers of her time, who saw a field traditionally reserved for men invaded by a woman considered more competent than many of them. This led her to say: «If my card said Emilio instead of Emilia, how different my life would have been.»

In 1888 she visited the Carlist pretender to the throne of Spain in Venice, and the articles she wrote as a result of the visit contributed to the split in Carlism.

Coinciding with the death of her father in 1890, her work evolved toward greater symbolism and spiritualism, evident in Una cristiana (1890), La prueba (1890), La piedra angular (1891), La quimera (1905), La sirena negra (1908) and Dulce dueño (1911). This same evolution can be seen in her more than five hundred short stories and tales, collected in Cuentos de la tierra (1888), Cuentos escogidos (1891), Cuentos de Marineda (1892) and Cuentos sacro-profanos (1899), among others.

In Una Cristiana and La Prueba, of 1890, she seems to engage in controversy through fiction with some of her moral detractors, such as Father Coloma, Menéndez Pelayo and Pereda. The age difference between lovers, the crossing of affections or family duties, and religious remorse are key ingredients. Adán y Eva, which groups the novels Doña Milagros (1894) and Memorias de un solterón (1896), seems, according to some literary critics, to be the justification of her relationship with Galdós. In La Quimera (1905), however, she returns to the etching style to portray dusty Madrid.

An amateur gastronome, she was the author of La cocina española antigua (1913) and La cocina española moderna (1917).

Nuevo Teatro Crítico

Cada uno (El Cuento Semanal, February 15, 1907)

In her reforming zeal, in 1890 Doña Emilia used her inheritance from her father to create a magazine of social and political thought written and financed entirely by her: Nuevo Teatro Crítico, titled in homage to Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, of whom she was a follower. It included essays, literary criticism, news about other writers and studies of current political and social affairs, with the aim of reflecting the intellectual life of her time, and its content was largely devoted to awareness of equality between men and women and its implementation.

At first it was successful; her direct style and sincerity heightened the controversy, which she did not disdain, and earned her a reputation as vehement and revolutionary. The venture lasted three years, and in her farewell to her readers she declared that she had lost both good humor and money in the enterprise.

The rich body of work of Emilia Pardo Bazán also includes travel books, such as Por Francia y por Alemania (1889) and Por la España pintoresca (1895), and the biographies San Francisco de Asís (1882) and Hernán Cortés (1914). Varela Jácome discovered an unpublished novel: Los misterios de Selva.

In 2012 her first novel, written at the age of thirteen, Aficiones peligrosas, was published in Spain for the first time.

Coat of arms of the Countess of Pardo Bazán, Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa.

Her extensive Obras completas were already printed during her lifetime (Obras Completas, Madrid: Imprenta A. Pérez Dubrull, 1891, 43 vols.), but the one that seems most complete is the posthumous edition of 1924 (Obras Completas, Valladolid: Imprenta Colegio de Santiago, S. A., 1924). Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles produced another edition with a study and notes, but limited to her narrative work: Obras Completas (Novelas y Cuentos) with a preliminary study, notes and prologue by Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, 1947, 2 vols.). The same publisher printed a selection under that title in 1973, entrusted to a specialist Hispanist: Obras Completas, bibliographical introduction, selection of critical material, prologue, classification of short stories, notes and appendices by Harry Kirby (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973, 3 vols.). Since 1999 the Biblioteca Antonio de Castro has undertaken the complete publication of her Obras Completas (Madrid: Fundación José Antonio de Castro, 1999–...) by the specialist Darío Villanueva.

Activism for women's rights

Pardo Bazán was a standard-bearer of women's rights and devoted her life to defending them, both in the course of her life and in her literary work. She defined herself as a radical feminist: “I am a radical feminist; I believe that every right that men have, women should have”. The creation of the monthly magazine Nuevo Teatro Crítico (1891–1893), which she wrote alone, complemented by the creation of the collection Biblioteca de la Mujer, which she founded and directed from 1892 to 1914, with especially relevant editions such as La esclavitud femenina by John Stuart Mill or La mujer ante el socialismo by August Bebel, are key to Pardo Bazán's drive to educate women.

In all her works she incorporated her ideas on the modernization of Spanish society, on the need for women's education and on women's access to all the rights and opportunities that men had.

Her careful education and her travels around Europe facilitated the development of her interest in the woman question. In 1882 she took part in a pedagogical congress of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza held in Madrid, openly criticizing in her address the education that Spanish women received, considering it a «taming» through which the values of passivity, obedience and submission to their husbands were transmitted to them. She also claimed for women the right to access all levels of education, to practice any profession, and the right to their happiness and their dignity.

Another of her endeavors was the presence of women in cultural institutions. Although aware of the sexism in intellectual circles, she proposed Concepción Arenal for the Real Academia Española, but the candidacy was rejected; neither had that of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda been accepted, nor her own candidacy, rejected on three occasions: in 1889, in 1892 and in 1912, when the Real Academia rejected her on the grounds of a procedural defect, even though the writer had obtained the support of prominent intellectuals and of favorable campaigns in newspapers in Galicia and Madrid.

Photograph of Emilia Pardo Bazán published in 1908 in the magazine Actualidades.

On February 9, 1905, she became the first woman admitted as a member of the Ateneo de Madrid, with number 7,925. Although she was already a renowned writer and had given lectures there, she could not enter the institution as a full member. After her admission, other prominent feminists and companions of Pardo Bazán immediately applied for membership: Blanca de los Ríos and Carmen de Burgos, admitted on March 10, and Gloria Laguna. A year later, in 1906, she was the first woman to chair the literature section of the Ateneo de Madrid.

Pardo Bazán was also the first woman to hold a chair of Neo-Latin literatures at the Central University of Madrid (in 1916), in addition to being appointed councilor of Public Instruction by Alfonso XIII in 1910.

Pardo Bazán had an intense social life that did not limit her activity as a writer. She concentrated her social activities during the months she spent in Madrid and her literary work in the months she spent in Galicia, generally at the Pazo de Meirás.

From her first move to Madrid she began to associate with politicians and intellectuals of the time, among them Giner de los Ríos, a friend of her parents, with whom she shared an interest in education and reformist concerns and whom she considered one of her best friends. Also Menéndez Pelayo, from whom she ended up distancing herself after the controversy over her writings of 1883. She was also friends with Pérez de Ayala, Miguel de Unamuno, Ramón de Campoamor, whose literary gatherings she attended, and Wenceslao Fernández Flórez.

From 1880 she maintained correspondence with Menéndez Pelayo and other writers and critics such as Clarín, who was a close friend of hers and wrote the prologue to her controversial book La cuestión palpitante. In it he says of Doña Emilia that she is «likable, brave and most discreet», but years later he declared that he regretted the prologue and began to criticize her works.

She had many clashes with José María de Pereda, especially when he declared that a woman could not be an academician, and a better relationship with Valera, although he did not support her either when Pardo Bazán sought to enter the Academy.

She admired and supported the works of the most avant-garde painters of the time, such as Sorolla and Aureliano de Beruete, and among the most important politicians of the time her friendship stands out with Castelar, Pi y Margall, Cánovas and Canalejas, with whom she had many debates and contacts.

Feminist work

Pardo Bazán in front of a typewriter

Pardo Bazán lived feminist awareness, considering equality between women and men to be an achievable goal. She had been born in 1851 in a social context in which she had to confront immobilism, obscurantist tradition and misogyny. One of her first and most emblematic feminist writings, notes the specialist in Pardo Bazán's work, the researcher Cristina Patiño Eirín, is the "Cartas a Tula", addressed to Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, her dreamed-of interlocutor, when the latter had already died. In 1883 she published La Tribuna, considered the first social novel and the first Spanish naturalist novel, in which she gives the leading role to a working woman, Amparo, with a voice of her own. And in 1885, with La dama joven, she presents two other protagonists reflecting on the situation of the women of her time. In 1883 she published Morriña and Insolación; both novels tell a story of seduction with women of different social classes as protagonists. In Insolación she raises, in a way that was revolutionary for the time, the possibility that a woman might desire a man without romantic love or intentions of marriage being involved. The work earned her harsh criticism from contemporary authors whom she had until then considered friends, such as Leopoldo Alas “Clarín” or José María Pereda, who considered the behavior of Asís, the protagonist of Insolación, immoral and went so far as to move from criticism of the character to criticism of the author.

The content of Nuevo Teatro Crítico, the magazine of which she was the sole writer, was largely devoted to feminism. She also created the collection "Biblioteca de la Mujer" (1892–1914), including in its second volume La esclavitud femenina by John Stuart Mill, with a prologue by Pardo Bazán herself.

The "Biblioteca de la Mujer" collection

From 1892 to 1914 Pardo Bazán financed and directed the publishing project "Biblioteca de la Mujer" with the aim of spreading among the female public the progressive ideas related to women's rights. Notable in the collection are La esclavitud femenina (The Subjection of Women, 1869), by John Stuart Mill, and La mujer ante el socialismo (Die Frau und der Sozialismus, 1879), by August Bebel. The definitive list of titles included in the Biblioteca is: I: Vida de la Virgen María (1892) by María de Jesús de Ágreda; II: La esclavitud femenina (1892) by John Stuart Mill; III: Novelas (1892) by María de Zayas; IV: Reinar en secreto (La Maintenon) (1892) by Father Mercier (SJ); V: Historia de Isabel la Católica (1892) by Gonzalve de Nervo; VI: Instrucción de la mujer cristiana (1892) by Juan Luis Vives; VII: La revolución y la novela en Rusia (1893) by Emilia Pardo Bazán; VIII: Mi romería (1893) by Emilia Pardo Bazán; IX: La mujer ante el socialismo (1893) by August Bebel; X: La cocina española antigua (1913) by Emilia Pardo Bazán; XI: La cocina española moderna (1914) by Emilia Pardo Bazán. The cookbooks, which are the last volumes, still carry at heart the author's feminist spirit.

Violence against women

Among the most recurrent themes of her short stories is that of sexist violence, a theme also very present in some of her novels. In 2018 Cristina Patiño Eirín, of the University of Santiago de Compostela, compiled thirty-five of these stories on this theme, giving the collection the title of one of the narratives included: El encaje roto.

Racial determinism

Portrayed in the pages of La Esfera (1921)

According to Brian J. Dendle, her naturalism drew partly on late-19th-century theories of racial heredity and racial atavism. She was well acquainted with the racial theories applied to criminology of Cesare Lombroso. With a Catholic ideological framework akin to that of Pidal y Mon, she nonetheless held racist ideas. She harbored antisemitic convictions that led her to denigrate both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. In 1899 she tried to justify the antisemitism of the Dreyfus affair from the pages of La Ilustración Artística: «The Dreyfus affair [is nothing] but an episode of the age-old struggle that in the Middle Ages bloodied the streets of Valencia and Toledo» [...] «The crusade against Dreyfus can be explained, and in being explained it is half justified».

Personal life

At the age of sixteen she married José Quiroga y Pérez Deza; three children were born of the marriage: Jaime (1876–1936), executed by firing squad during the civil war, Blanca (1879–1970) and Carmen (1881–1935). They separated amicably in 1884, after which he withdrew to live on his Galician estates and she continued her activity as a writer in Madrid and Galicia. He followed her career with interest and on occasion was even the organizer of some tribute she received in Galicia. When he died in 1912, the writer observed strict mourning for a year.

Portrayed by Joaquín Sorolla around 1913

Subsequently she began a romantic relationship with Benito Pérez Galdós, at that time also close to naturalism, with whom she had previously maintained a literary relationship. Confirmation of this relationship, which would last more than twenty years, and its details were revealed from 1970 onward, after the publication of 32 unpublished letters from Emilia to Galdós. According to Bravo-Villafante, it is possible that the correspondence with Galdós dated from 1881. From her unpublished correspondence it can be deduced that the literary friendship developed into a romantic intimacy that lasted five years, which Galdós combined with another relationship with his lover Lorenza Cobián. In the end, Pardo Bazán had an affair with Lázaro Galdiano, «a momentary error of the senses, the fruit of unforeseen circumstances», as she described it. The writer was deeply hurt by the infidelity, which, suitably disguised, was reflected in two of his novels —La incógnita and Realidad— and in one of hers —Insolación—. The relationship was characterized by great mutual admiration, and the correspondence reveals a great friendship and a great literary and romantic intimacy.

Pardo Bazán died in 1921, from a complication of the diabetes she suffered from, at number 27 of Madrid's Calle de la Princesa, where she had been living since 1917. She is buried in Madrid in the Basilica of the Conception, although she had given instructions to be buried at the Torres de Meirás.

Works

Monument to Emilia Pardo Bazán on Calle Princesa (Madrid), by the sculptor Rafael Vela del Castillo.

Narrative

• Pascual López: autobiografía de un estudiante de Medicina (1879).
• Un viaje de novios (1881).
• La tribuna (1883).
• El Cisne de Vilamorta (1885).
• La dama joven (1885). Novella.
• Bucólica (1885). Novella.
• Los pazos de Ulloa (1886–1887).
• La madre naturaleza (1887).
• Insolación (historia amorosa) (1889).
• Morriña (historia amorosa) (1889).
• Una cristiana (1890).
• La prueba (1890).
• La piedra angular (1891).
• Doña Milagros (1894).
• Memorias de un solterón (1896).
• El tesoro de Gastón (1897).
• El saludo de las brujas (1899).
• El niño de Guzmán (1900)
• Misterio (1902).
• Novelas ejemplares (1904).
  • Los tres arcos de Cirilo
  • Un drama
  • Mujer
• La quimera (1905).
• Cada uno... (1907). Novella.
• La sirena negra (1908).
• Belcebú (1908). Novella.
• Allende la verdad (1908). Novella.
• Dulce dueño (1911).
• La gota de sangre (1911). Novella.
• En las cavernas (1912).
• La aventura de Isidro (1916). Novella.
• La última fada (1916). Novella.
• Clavileño (1917). Novella.
• Dioses (1919). Novella.
• La serpe (1920). Novella.
• Instinto. Novella.
• Arrastrada. Novella.
• La muerte del poeta. Novella.
• Los misterios de Selva, unpublished novel.
• La pipa de kif, unpublished novel.
• Aficiones peligrosas (1864), written at age 13.

Short fiction: short stories

Emilia Pardo Bazán was a prolific writer of short stories, of which more than six hundred and fifty were published.

• La dama joven y otros cuentos (1885)
• La leyenda de la Pastoriza (1887)
• Cuentos de la tierra (1888)
• Cuentos escogidos (1891)
• Cuentos de Marineda (1892)
• Cuentos de Navidad y Año Nuevo (1893)
• Cuentos nuevos (1894).
• Arco Iris (cuentos) (1895)
• El encaje roto (1897). Short story.
• Cuentos de amor (1898)
• Cuentos sacro-profanos (1899)
• La rosa (1899). Short story.
• Un destripador de antaño (Historias y cuentos de Galicia) (1900)
• Vampiro (1901). Short story.
• En tranvía (Cuentos dramáticos) (1901)
• Cuentos de Navidad y Reyes (1902)
• Cuentos de la Patria (1902)
• Cuentos antiguos (1902)
• Interiores (1907)
• Cuentos del terruño (1907)
• Sud-exprés (cuentos actuales) (1909)
• Cuentos trágicos (1912)
• El conde llora y otros cuentos
• La novia fiel y otros relatos (published in the newspaper El Imparcial) (1890–1899)
• La camarona
• Infidelidad
• El indulto

Essays and criticism

• Estudio crítico de las obras del padre Feijoo (1876).
• Los poetas épicos cristianos (1895).
• La cuestión palpitante (1883).
• La revolución y la novela en Rusia (1887).
• De mi tierra (1888).
• Los pedagogos del Renacimiento, Madrid, Fortanet (1889).
• Nuevo Teatro Crítico (1891–1892).
• Polémicas y estudios literarios (1892).
• La nueva cuestión palpitante (1894)
• Lecciones de literatura (1906)
• La literatura francesa moderna (1910–1911).
  • Tomo I, El Romanticismo, Madrid: V. Prieto (1910).
  • Tomo II, La transición, Madrid: V. Prieto (1911).
  • Tomo III, El Naturalismo, Madrid: Imp. Prudencio Pérez de Velasco (1911).
• La cocina española antigua (1913).
• La cocina española moderna (1913).
• Porvenir de la literatura después de la guerra (1917).
• La mujer española y otros escritos (1916).
• El lirismo en la poesía francesa (Obra póstuma), Madrid, Pueyo (1921).

Lectures and speeches

• Discurso leído por Emilia Pardo Bazán Presidenta de la Junta provisional del Folklore gallego, La Coruña, Fregenal a cargo de Tórrellas y Cía. (1884).
• El Folklore gallego en 1884-1885. Sus actas y acuerdos y discursos, por Emilia Pardo Bazán y Memoria por Salvador Golpe. Madrid: Tip. de Ricardo Fé (1886).
• La España de ayer y la de hoy Discurso pronunciado en la Sala Charras París (18 de abril del 1899), Sociedad de Conferencias. Published in Madrid: A. Avrial (1901).
• Discurso inaugural del Ateneo de Valencia pronunciado la noche del 29 de diciembre de 1899, Madrid: Tip. de Idamor Moreno (1899).
• Discurso pronunciado en los Juegos Florales de Orense la noche del 7 de junio de 1901. Tema: Los males de la Patria La Coruña: Tip. de la Casa de la Misericordia (1901).
• Discurso a la Memoria del Poeta José María Gabriel y Galán. Salamanca (1905).

Travel books

• Mi romería (recuerdos de viaje) (1887)
• Al pie de la torre Eiffel (Crónicas de la Exposición), Madrid, La España Editorial (1889).
• Al pie de la torre Eiffel, Madrid, Est. Tip. Idamor Moreno (1899).
• Al pie de la torre Eiffel, Madrid, La Línea del Horizonte Ediciones (2020).
• Por Francia y por Alemania (Crónicas de la Exposición), Madrid, La España Editorial (1889).
• Por la España pintoresca, Barcelona, López editor (1895).
• Cuarenta días en la Exposición, Madrid, V. Prieto y Cía. (1900).
• Por la Europa católica, Madrid, Est. Tip. Idamor Moreno (1902).
• Desde la montaña. Ed. by José Manuel González Herrán and José Ramón Saiz Viadero, Santander, Tantín (1997).
• Viajes por Europa, Madrid, Bercimuel (2003).
• Viajes por España, Madrid, Bercimuel (2006).
• Apuntes de un viaje. De España a Ginebra [1873], facsimile reproduction. Edited by José Manuel González Herrán, Santiago, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela-Real Academia Gallega (2014).

Journalism

• De siglo a siglo, Madrid, Est. Tip. Idamor Moreno (1902).
• Nuevo Teatro Crítico, Madrid, La España Editorial (1891–1893).
• La Revista de Galicia de Emilia Pardo Bazán (1880). Study and edition by Ana M.ª Freire López, La Coruña, Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, Conde de Fenosa (1999).
• La obra periodística completa en La Nación de Buenos Aires (1879-1921). Edited by Juliana Sinovas Maté, La Coruña, Diputación Provincial (1999), 2 vols.
• Cartas de la Condesa en el Diario de la Marina, La Habana (1909-1915). Edited by Cecilia Heydl-Cortínez, Madrid, Pliegos (2002).
• De siglo a siglo (Edición facsímil a partir del volumen de Obras completas), Madrid, Senado, Servicio de Publicaciones del Senado (2002).
• La Vida Contemporánea, Madrid, Área de las Artes (2005).
• La Vida Contemporánea (Edición conmemorativa en el centenario del fallecimiento de la escritora), Madrid, Área de Cultura, Turismo y Deporte (2021).

Theater

• Teatro [Verdad. Cuesta abajo. Juventud. Las raíces. El vestido de boda (monólogo). El becerro de metal. La suerte (diálogo dramático)], Madrid, R. Velasco impr. (1909).
• Teatro completo. Edited by Montserrat Ribao, Madrid, Akal (2010).
• El vestido de boda. Monólogo, Madrid, Est. Tip. de Idamor Moreno (1899).
• La suerte. Diálogo dramático, Madrid, Est. Tip. de Idamor Moreno (1904).
• Verdad. Drama en cuatro actos, en prosa, Madrid, R. Velasco impr. (1906).
• Cuesta abajo. comedia dramática en cinco actos, en prosa, Madrid, R. Velasco impr. (1906).
• Las raíces: comedia dramática en tres actos, en prosa
• El becerro de metal: comedia dramática en tres actos, en prosa
• Juventud: comedia dramática en tres actos, en prosa, original

Biographies

• San Francisco de Asís, siglo XIII, Madrid, Librería de Miguel Olamendi (1882), 2 vols.
• Hombres y mujeres de antaño (Semblanzas), Barcelona, López (1896).
• Retratos y apuntes literarios, Madrid, Administración (1908).
• Hernán Cortés y sus hazañas, Madrid, La Lectura (1914).
• Francisco Pizarro o Historia de la conquista del Perú, Madrid, Voluntad (1917).
• Cuadros religiosos, Madrid, Pueyo (1925).

Poetry

• Jaime (1876)
• Jaime, Madrid, Imprenta de A. J. Alaria (1881).
• Jaime, Nancy, Imp. Berger-Levrault & Cie. (1886).
• Jaime, Madrid, Jesús López (1924).
• Poesías inéditas u olvidadas. Ed. by Maurice Hemingway, Exeter, University of Exeter Press (1996).

Cookbooks

• La cocina española antigua (1913).
• La cocina española moderna (1917).

Translations

• John Stuart Mill, La esclavitud femenina; with a prologue by Emilia Pardo Bazán, Madrid, Administración (189-?).

Correspondence

• Cartas a Galdós, edited by Carmen Bravo-Villasante, Madrid, Turner (1978)
• «Miquiño mío». Cartas a Galdós, new edition (February 2020) with unpublished material, by Isabel Parreño and Juan Manuel Hernández.
• Cartas de buena amistad: epistolario de Emilia Pardo Bazán a Blanca de los Ríos (1893-1919). Editorial Iberoamericana, 2016

Recognition

Mural of Emilia Pardo Bazán in Oleiros.

Emilia Pardo Bazán Avenue in Oleiros.

In July 2018 the Association “Herstóricas. Historia, Mujeres y Género” and the Collective “Autoras de Cómic” created a cultural and educational project to make visible the historical contribution of women to society and to reflect on their absence, consisting of a card game. One of these cards is dedicated to Pardo Bazán.

Tributes

• Since 2017, General Primo de Rivera Street in Valladolid has been renamed Calle de Emilia Pardo Bazán.
• A street in the City of Montevideo, Uruguay, bears her name.
• In 2022 the assembly hall of the Faculty of Philology of the Complutense University of Madrid was named after Emilia Pardo Bazán.
• A street in the City of Santander bears her name.

See also

• Spanish literature of Realism: Realism in the Spanish literary context.
• Literary realism: Overview of the movement.
• Spanish literature: Evolution of Spanish literature.

Bibliography

• Álvarez Chillida, Gonzalo (2002). El antisemitismo en España: la imagen del judío, 1812-2002 (in español). Madrid: Marcial Pons Ediciones de Historia. ISBN 84-95379-44-9.
• Burdiel, Isabel (2019). Emilia Pardo Bazán. Colección: «Españoles eminentes» (in español) (Primera ed.). Barcelona (España): Taurus. ISBN 978-84-3061-838-5.
• Dendle, Brian J. (1970). "The Racial Theories of Emilia Pardo Bazán". Hispanic Review. 38 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 17–31. ISSN 0018-2176. JSTOR 472020.
• Gómez-Ferrer, Guadalupe (2016). "Soledad Acosta de Samper y Emilia Pardo Bazán: dos pioneras del feminismo". Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea (in español). 38: 127–140. ISSN 0214-400X. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
• Guereña, Jean-Louis (2003). ""Aunque fuera inocente ..." El "Affaire" Dreyfus y el antisemitismo en la crisis española de fin de siglo". El olivo y la espada: Estudios sobre el antisemitismo en España (siglos XVI-XX) (in español). In: Pere Joan i Tous (Ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH: 341–362. ISBN 3-484-57006-7. ISSN 1435-098X.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
• López Quintáns, Javier (2015), "Emilia Pardo Bazán ante el fin de siglo: Edición de 'Eduardo Rod. El Pensador", Lexis (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Departamento de Humanidades), Vol. 39 (2), pp. 287–31, ISSN: 0254-9239.
• Miller, G. (2015), "Disrupting Nineteenth-Century Dichotomies of Gender: Reading and Imagination in Emilia Pardo Bazán's "La madre Naturaleza", Hispanic Review, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Vol. 83 (3), pp. 317–336, ISSN: 0018-2176.
• Pardo Bazán, Emilia (July 3, 1899). "De Europa". La Ilustración Artística (in español). XVIII (914). Barcelona: 426. ISSN 1889-853X.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Rehrmann, Norbert. "El síndrome de Cenicienta: moros y judíos en la literatura española del siglo XIX y XX". El antisemitismo en España (in español). In: Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida and Ricardo Izquierdo Benito (Coords.). Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha: 207–236. ISBN 978-84-8427-471-1.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)

External links

• Works by Emilia Pardo Bazán on Spanish Wikisource.
• Portal dedicated to Emilia Pardo Bazán at the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes.
• Another portal dedicated to Emilia Pardo Bazán.
• Digitized works of Emilia Pardo Bazán in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain.
• Digitized works of Emilia Pardo Bazán at Project Gutenberg.
• Emilia Pardo Bazán, inclasificable, Imprescindibles RTVE, April 28, 2024
• Audiobooks of the works of Emilia Pardo Bazán available in the free public-domain digital library "LibriVox"