La Tribuna

Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921), countess of Pardo Bazan, was a Spanish author, journalist, literary critic, and prominent feminist figure. She is known for introducing naturalism into Spanish literature and for her groundbreaking introduction of feminist ideas into the literature of her era. She was born in the Galician town of A Coruna into an affluent noble family who nurtured her lifelong thirst for knowledge and secured for her an education beyond the expectations of most girls of the period. Bazan went on to become the most controversial, influential, and prolific female Spanish writer of the 19th century, publishing a vast number of essays, social commentaries, reviews, poems, plays, novels and short stories. Her third novel, La Tribuna, heavily influenced by the ideas of Emile Zola and widely considered the first Spanish naturalist novel, examines the situation of contemporary women workers. Bazan prepared for writing the book by spending two months in a Galician tobacco factory, listening to the workers' conversations, and also consulted numerous pamphlets and newspapers. Set against a background of turmoil and civil unrest, La Tribuna reflects the author's interest in the position of women in Spanish society. The working-class heroine, Amparo, develops from an apolitical street urchin into an icon of femininity and feminism, a charismatic orator heralded as a tribune of the people. Simultaneously, she allows herself to be seduced by a prosperous middle-class youth whose promises prove as empty as the revolutionary slogans in which she so fervently believes. Reprinted from an original Spanish language edition.