Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is generally recognized as Spain’s greatest writer of fiction after Cervantes, ranking amongst the major nineteenth-century Realists alongside Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. He was a prolific writer and his output includes forty-six

Episodios Nacionales

(“National Episodes”, i.e. historical novels), thirty-two novels, twenty-four plays and the equivalent of twenty volumes of shorter fiction, journalism and other writings.

Galdós was born on 10 May 1843 in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, the youngest of ten children of a middle-class family. His father, Don Sebastián Pérez, was a moderately prosperous ex-soldier who had fought in the War of Independence and his mother, Doña María Dolores Galdós, was inflexible and domineering. It has been suggested

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Citation: Davies, Rhian. "Benito Pérez Galdós". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 December 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5489, accessed 19 March 2024.]

5489 Benito Pérez Galdós 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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