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Dona Perfecta, by B. Perez Galdos
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dona Perfecta, by B. Perez Galdos This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Dona Perfecta
Author: B. Perez Galdos
Commentator: W. D. Howells
Translator: Mary J. Serrano
Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2462]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
DONA PERFECTA
by B. PEREZ GALDOS
Translated from the Spanish by Mary J. Serrano
INTRODUCTION
The very acute and lively Spanish critic who signs himself Clarin, and is known personally as Don Leopoldo Alas, says the present Spanish novel has no yesterday, but only a day-before-yesterday. It does not derive from the romantic novel which immediately preceded that: the novel, large or little, as it was with Cervantes, Hurtado de Mendoza, Quevedo, and the masters of picaresque fiction.
Clarin dates its renascence from the political revolution of 1868, which gave Spanish literature the freedom necessary to the fiction that studies to reflect modern life, actual ideas, and current aspirations; and though its authors were few at first, "they have never been adventurous spirits, friends of Utopia, revolutionists, or impatient progressists and reformers." He thinks that the most daring, the most advanced, of the new Spanish novelists, and the best by far, i