Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán

Emilia, condesa de Pardo Bazán (born September 16, 1852, La Coruña, Spain—died May 12, 1921, Madrid) was a Spanish author of novels, short stories, and literary criticism.

Pardo Bazán attained early eminence with her polemical essay “La cuestión palpitante” (1883; “The Critical Issue”). It discussed Émile Zola and naturalism, made French and Russian literary movements known in Spain, and started an important literary controversy in which she championed a brand of naturalism that affirmed the free will of the individual. Her finest and most representative novels are The House of Ulloa (originally in Spanish, Los pazos de Ulloa, 1886) and its sequel, La madre naturaleza (1887; “Mother Nature”)—studies of physical and moral ruin among the Galician squirearchy, set against a beautiful natural background and a moral background of corrupting power. Insolación (“Sunstroke”) and Morriña (“The Blues”; both 1889) are excellent psychological studies. Her husband separated from her because her literary reputation scandalized him. Pardo Bazán was professor of Romance literature at the University of Madrid. In 1916 she was accorded the distinction—unusual for a woman in those days—of a chair of literature.