Tristana

[Perez Galdos’s] prophetic gift for singling out those issues that were bound to transcend and outlast his own milieu was equaled only by his knack for keeping them controversial and alive in his fiction by refusing to take a clear-cut position on them. Hispanic Review Galdos immersed himself in the realities of his day and recorded them accurately. Symposium Magazine Tristana is a peach. An utterly delicious novel, even better than the Bunuel film. – Phillip Lopate Galdos was the great novelist of Madrid, chronicling bourgeois, urban manners with a clarity and understanding critics have found comparable to that of Dickens, Balzac and Flaubert. – Raymund A. Paredes Los Angeles Times Perez Galdos is one of the treasures of 19th-century Spanish fiction. – The New York Times William Ferguson “[Perez Galdos’s] prophetic gift for singling out those issues that were bound to transcend and outlast his own milieu was equaled only by his knack for keeping them controversial and alive in his fiction by refusing to take a clear-cut position on them.” Hispanic Review “Galdos immersed himself in the realities of his day and recorded them accurately.” Symposium Magazine

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920)

Benito Pérez Galdós was born into a middle-class family in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. At nineteen, he was sent to Madrid to study law. However, he neglected his studies and immersed himself in the city’s social and political life, an experience that honed his conscience and solidified his calling as a writer. He frequented theaters, concerts, galleries, and museums, and began publishing articles on literature, art, music, and politics.

Galdós was the first to translate The Pickwick Papers into Spanish, and his discovery of Balzac’s works in Paris profoundly influenced him. His first novel, La fontana de oro, was published privately and initially garnered little attention, but critics soon hailed it as a turning point for the Spanish novel.

Over a career spanning more than forty years, Galdós penned nearly eighty novels and some twenty plays. He also traveled extensively throughout Spain and abroad, and engaged in discreet affairs, including one with fellow novelist Emilia Pardo Bazán.

His most ambitious project, the forty-six-volume Episodios nacionales, chronicled different episodes in Spanish history from the Battle of Trafalgar onward. Galdós continued writing until his death at seventy-six, dictating his novels to an amanuensis when blindness rendered him unable to write.

Galdós’s novels offer a vivid portrayal of nineteenth-century Spain, populated by fascinating characters from all social strata. His masterpiece is widely considered to be the expansive Fortunata y Jacinta, with other notable works including Dona Perfecta, Misericordia, La de Bringas, and Miau. Luis Buñuel adapted three of his novels—Viridiana, Nazarin, and Tristana—perhaps recognizing Galdós as a kindred subversive spirit.

Margaret Jull Costa

Margaret Jull Costa has been translating Spanish and Portuguese literature for nearly thirty years. Her notable translations include works by José Saramago, Javier Marías, and Eça de Queiroz. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN Translation Prize. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2014, she was awarded an OBE for her contributions to literature. She resides in the United Kingdom.

Jeremy Treglown

Jeremy Treglown is a writer and literary critic recognized for his work on Spanish culture, film, and literature. His published works include several biographies, such as V. S. Pritchett, which was short-listed for the Whitbread Award for Biography, and most recently Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936. He served as the editor of The Times Literary Supplement for nearly a decade and is currently the Donald C. Gallup Fellow in American Literature at the Beinecke Library at Yale. He lives in the United Kingdom.

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