Un Viaje de Novios

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. Un Viaje de Novios, Bazan's second novel published in 1881, tells the story of Lucia, a young an inexperienced provincial girl from Leon who is married off by her family to a much older civil servant. Whilst there is no love or empathy between the newlyweds, Lucia believes it to be her duty to accept her fate. When the couple take a trip to Vichy, an accident befalls Lucia's husband so she must continue the journey without him, and when she meets a young man who accompanies her to Bayonne he awakens in Lucia feelings she has hitherto repressed. Bazan expertly creates a parallel between the physical journey on which her characters embark and the emotional one experienced as events unfold. Reprinted from an original Spanish language edition.