Emilia Pardo Bazán facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán Countess of Pardo Bazán
Portrait by Joaquín Vaamonde Cornide [es] (1896)
Born	Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa (1851-09-16)16 September 1851 A Coruña, Spain
Died	12 May 1921(1921-05-12) (aged 69) Madrid, Spain
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, journalist, critic
Nationality	Spanish
Period	19th century
Genre	Novel
Literary movement	Realism and Naturalism
Spouse	José Antonio de Quiroga y Pérez de Deza
Children	3
Coat of arms of the Countess of Pardo Bazán

Emilia Pardo Bazán (born September 16, 1851 – died May 12, 1921) was a famous Spanish writer. She was a novelist, journalist, and literary critic. She also worked as a poet, playwright, and professor.

Emilia Pardo Bazán is known for bringing a style called naturalism to Spanish books. This style uses very detailed descriptions of real life. She also brought new ideas about women's rights into her writing. She believed women should have the same chances as men.

Life Story of Emilia Pardo Bazán

Early Life and Education

Emilia Pardo Bazán was born into a rich family in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. She was the only child of José Pardo Bazán y Mosquera and Amalia de la Rúa Figueroa y Somoza. Her family had several homes.

Her father believed that boys and girls were equally smart. He made sure Emilia got the best education possible. This helped her love for books grow throughout her life. She wrote her first poems when she was only nine years old.

Emilia could read many books from her father's large library. She said her favorite books included Don Quijote de la Mancha and the Iliad. Her family spent winters in Madrid. There, Emilia went to a French school. She learned about French writers like La Fontaine.

When she was twelve, her family stopped going to Madrid in winter. She stayed in A Coruña and studied with private teachers. Emilia did not want to learn only music and home skills, which was common for girls then. She studied many subjects, especially humanities and languages. She became fluent in French, English, and German. Women were not allowed to go to college to study science or philosophy. But Emilia learned about these subjects by reading and talking with her father's friends.

Marriage and Writing Career

At sixteen, Emilia married José Antonio de Quiroga y Pérez de Deza. He was eighteen and studying law. In 1868, a big change happened in Spain called the Glorious Revolution. This made Emilia interested in politics.

In 1876, she won a writing prize for an essay. It was about a monk named Father Feijoo. Emilia admired Feijoo because he had ideas about women's equality long before his time. In the same year, she published her first book of poems, named Jaime, after her new son.

Her first novel, Pascual López, came out in 1879. It was written in a realistic and romantic style. Its success encouraged her. Two years later, she published Un viaje de novios. This book started to show her interest in French naturalism.

Her book La tribuna (1883) was even more influenced by Émile Zola's ideas. Many people see it as the first Spanish naturalist novel. Critics were upset by her strong views. She wrote a book in 1884 called La cuestión palpitante to answer them. Her husband found the public reaction difficult. Two years later, they separated, but remained friends.

In 1885, she published El Cisne de Vilamorta. This book had more naturalist scenes than her earlier works. Los pazos de Ulloa (1886) is often seen as her best work. It tells the story of a noble family falling apart. It also beautifully describes country life in Galicia. A follow-up book, La madre naturaleza (1887), continued her naturalist style. From then on, Emilia Pardo Bazán was known as a leader of the naturalist movement in Spain. Her fame as a novelist was at its peak around 1889.

Later in her life, Emilia Pardo Bazán wrote many essays and gave talks. She also started writing about politics. She fought for women's rights to be educated and to have more freedom. Around 1890, her writing style changed. It became more focused on deeper meanings and spiritual ideas.

Her last novel, Dulce dueño, was published in 1911. She kept writing short stories, like El revólver. She published over 600 short stories in her career.

Fighting for Women's Rights

Emilia Pardo Bazán was a strong supporter of women's rights. She used her writing and her life to defend them. In her books, she shared her ideas about modernizing Spanish society. She believed women needed education and access to all the rights and chances that men had.

In 1882, she spoke at a conference. She openly criticized how Spanish women were educated. She said they were taught to be quiet, obey, and submit to their husbands.

Even though many people in her time were sexist, Emilia Pardo Bazán achieved many firsts. In 1906, she became the first woman to lead the literature section of the Ateneo de Madrid. She was also the first woman to hold a professor's job in Neo-Latin literature at the Central University Of Madrid.

When her father died in 1908, she inherited the title of Countess. In 1910, she was made a member of the Council of Public Instruction. In 1921, she was chosen for the Senate, but she never officially took her seat. She was very frustrated because she was repeatedly denied a seat at the Royal Spanish Academy. This was only because she was a woman.

She passed away in Madrid in 1921.

Food Writer

Emilia Pardo Bazán loved food and cooking. In 1905, she wrote the introduction for a cookbook by her friend Manuel Purga y Parga. Later, she wrote her own cookbooks, such as La cocina española antigua (1913). She is known as one of the writers who helped create the idea of modern Spanish national cuisine in the early 1900s. This was a way for Spaniards to recognize their own food traditions.

Tribute

A statue honoring Pardo Bazán was put up in Madrid on June 24, 1926. She also appeared on a Spanish postage stamp in 1972.

On September 16, 2017, Google celebrated her 166th birthday with a special Google Doodle on their homepage.

See also

In Spanish: Emilia Pardo Bazán para niños