Benito Pérez Galdós (1843 – 1920)

A few photographs, or the portraits by Joaquín Sorolla (1894, 1911), show Benito Pérez Galdós as a plain man, rumpled in dress, his face distinguished only by a curling moustache and sly look. His hands hold a cigar or cane; a scarf trails down his overcoat or a cat lies curled on his lap. Even formal portraits have an informal air – Galdós looks ordinary, much like his friend Máximo Manso, protagonist of El amigo Manso, 1882, who sits stroking a cat to conceal his unease. Plainness, reticence, an ironic smile – these traits seem at odds with Galdós's prodigious literary achievement: seventy-seven novels, fifteen original plays and numerous occasional pieces, written between 1867 and his death in 1920. At least a dozen of his contemporary social novels rank with the best in any language.

Galdós was born in 1843 in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, the last of ten children. He started out modestly enough, leaving home and a domineering mother at the age of nineteen to study law at the University in Madrid. But he hardly attended classes. Café life, the theater and events of a city in political turmoil claimed his attention. In 1867, though still registered as a student, he made a first trip to Paris, discovered Balzac and, as he says, “breakfasted” on the novels of La Comédie Humaine. From Balzac he conceived the idea of writing a series of interrelated historical and social novels, seeing himself as a writer, not a lawyer, and started La Fontana de Oro (The Golden Fountain Café), his first full-length novel.