Morrina (Homesickness).
Written And Translated By Women
Bazán, Emilia Pardo. Morriña (Homesickness). By Emilia Pardo Bazán, translated by Mary J. Serrano. New York: Cassell Publishing Company, (1891).
8vo.; t.e.g.; ownership signature on front pastedown; bookseller sticker affixed to rear pastedown; green cloth boards; decoratively stamped in gilt and green; spine sunned; two small holes at top of spine; rubbed; corners bumped.
First edition in English of this rare translation by a woman, of the work of one of Spain’s most prolific 19th-century female authors and leading feminists; with black and white illustrations, and one page of publisher’s advertisements in the rear. Mary J. Serrano, the translator, worked on other books of Bazán’s, including The Swan of Vilamorta (1891) and A Wedding Trip (1891), and translated other Spanish-language books, like Amalia: A Romance of the Argentine (1919), by Jose Marmol, and Dona Luz (1891), by Juan Valera. She is also the author of a book of poetry, Destiny, and Other Poems (1883).
When Morriña was published in 1891, Bazán was already an accomplished novelist, having published short works in literary journals since age fifteen, as well as several books, including Un Viaje de Novios (1881); Los Pazos de Ulloa (1886); La Madre Naturaleza (1887); Insolacion (1889); and La Prueba (1890). She published ten more novels, including El Tesoro de Gascon (1897) and La Quimera (1905); a collection of essays La Cuestion Palpitante (1883); and a posthumous collection of short stories, poems and essays, the 43-volume Obras Completas (1926).
Bazán is credited with contributing vastly to the genre of Spanish Realism. She was also the founder of the Nuevo Teatro Critico, a feminist journal, which was published from 1891 to 1893, and and was a professor of Romance languages at the Atheneum of Madrid. According to Mary Giles,
Pardo Bazán’s feminism is well known. In her own time she challenged the conventions of a society which sealed women in a role, and her audacity often met with rebuke, scorn, grudging tolerance, sometimes agreement and praise. Clearly she did not go unnoticed or disregarded, for irrespective of personal or professional bias, her critics could not dismiss her as boring or frivolous, and the thickest veil of sarcasm cannot conceal the fact that they did take her seriously.
Bazán (1851-1921) was born into wealth and title, and while she had access to her family’s well-stocked library, she received no formal education—a privilege denied even well-born girls at the time. She married a law student, Jose Quiroga, in 1868 when she was 17. Her desire to educate herself forced her to use creative methods; she dressed as a man to attend classes with her husband. After having been married for 20 years, and having three children together, the couple separated and led independent lives; Bazán continued to publish until her death.
“Feminism and the Feminine in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s Novels,” by Mary E. Giles, Hispania, Vol. 63, No. 2. (May, 1980), pp. 356-367.
“Emilia Condesa de Pardo Bazán,” Feminist Writers, St. James Press, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
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