Born: 16 September 1851, Spain
Died: 12 May 1921
Country most active: Spain
Also known as: Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Spanish writer and novelist, only daughter of Count de Pardo Bazan.
She was born September 16, 1852, in La Coruna, and was the descendant of an illustrious Gallegan family on both sides. She died in 1921.
Educated early with the greatest care, her parents encouraged her literary vocation, very developed in the young girl. She read with great ease at the age of five or six, and at fourteen she had already read the Bible, the Illiad and Don Quixote, her favorite books. She finished her education in Madrid, and while in college she composed verses, doing it secretly. She has written in the preface to her Los Pazos de Vlloa, one of her most important works: ‘‘Three important events in my life,” the famous author writes, “followed each other very closely: I donned long dresses, I married, and the revolution of September, 1868 broke out. When my father was elected to the Cortes of 1869, we started to spend our winters in Madrid and our summers in Galicia.” She had not as yet thought seriously of her literary career, which was to bring her so much fame. From the date of her marriage to D. Jose de Quiroga, she was spending her time between Madrid and Galicia. Possessing a culture so wide and unequal, she has confessed that in 1874 and 1875 she was not aware of the existence of Galdos and Pereda, two famous Spanish writers. In 1881 she published a book of poems, which were reprinted in 18S6. Short iy after giving birth to her first son in 1874, she published a critical work on the Literary Worlds of Feijoo, which she wrote in seventy days. She contributed regularly to Madrid reviews. She wrote Pascual Lopez, the autobiography of a medical student, which was published in 1879.
This work was very well received. She published Un Viaje de Novios in 1881, with a preface in which she called for more Spanish character in the novels. La Tribuna (1883) follows very closely the naturalist school, which novel was translated into French. In 1882 she published San Francisco de Asis, a life of the saint; in 1883 La Cuestion Palpitante; in 1885 El Cisne de Villamorta, followed by La Dama Joven, in 1886 Los Pazos de Ulloa, her greatest work, following it with her La Madre Naturaleza in 1887, a sequel. From this year to 1890 she published six more volumes, and from 1891 to 1902 twelve more. She continued to produce until her death in 1921. Of her it has been said that she was the greatest novelist which Spain produced during the XIX Century.