—146→ —147→
Galdosianos have long felt the lack of a bibliography of material by and about the great Spanish author. The Galdós bibliographer faces challenges not faced by those who prepare bibliographies on authors of less importance. Galdós was a prolific author; his works went through numerous editions. Outside of Cervantes, he is probably Spain's most translated author. He contributed to numerous newspapers and journals. Many of his works have been made into textbooks and parts of his works appear in numerous anthologies for world literature. Several of his works have been made into movies and their scripts published. In regard to biographical and critical studies on Galdós, in academic circles in the United States there would appear to have been written more dissertations on him than Cervantes and Galdós, especially in recent years, has been the subject of books, articles and lectures wherever Spanish is spoken or taught.
All studens of Benito Pérez Galdós will find themselves immeasurably in the debt of Manuel Hernández Suárez and his Bibliografía de Galdós, I, [Las Palmas], Ediciones del Excmo. Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 1972 (the colophon is dated 1974), xiv, 553 pp. His efforts in compiling this volume and the one to follow, a bibliography of material about Galdós, can only be highly applauded. It may be that only another bibliographer can truly appreciate the long and tedious hours that Hernández Suárez has spent in compiling this bibliography. He has centered his research in the libraries of Madrid (chiefly the Biblioteca Nacional) and the Museo Canario and the Casa-Museo Pérez Galdós in Las Palmas. Many of the title pages that are reproduced are from material found in the Casa-Museo. Hernández Suárez has worked many years on this bibliography and his care and devotion to his subject are apparent throughout. This is a first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of material by Galdós. It would seem that the compiler hoped to cover Galdós' publications through the mid-1960's, for there are very few items listed published after 1965 and none after 1968. For material by and about Galdós published after this date the interested student and scholar should use the carefully classified bibliographies of Galdós that Hernández Suárez has contributed on an almost annual basis to the Anales galdosianos. Hernández Suárez began publishing his supplements to this main volume even before it had been published.
This review is divided into two main parts. The first part is an outline of the bibliography's contents and arrangement. The second part details some of the types of material omitted in an effort to show a few of the volume's limitations.
Part I, pp. 17-24, deals with the Obras completas of 1941-1942. —148→ Part II, «Novelas», pp. 29-168, arranges the novels in chronological order of their publication. Each novel is divided in two parts: a listing of those published in Spain in Spanish and «Otras ediciones», Spanish editions or translations published outside of Spain arranged by country as well as Catalan translations. Thus the 51 items under Doña Perfecta begin with its publication in the Revista de España followed by the first edition of 1876, items 3-16 provide data on editions published in Spain, whereas the other entries deal with it as published in Argentina, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, U. S. A., France, Holland, Hungary, England, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Rumania, Russia rather than Soviet Union, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia. This listing will really provide us with a knowledge of Hernández Suárez's data on translations by country, but it does not necessarily provide data concerning the number of languages into which a given work has appeared. From the data provided under Czechoslovakia it would appear that Doña Perfecta has appeared in both Czeck and Slovak. Hernández Suárez provides no data concerning the language of the Yugoslav translation.
It must be emphasized that to a great extent this is an enumerative bibliography rather than a descriptive one. The first edition of Doña Perfecta is described in only two lines. It is also to be noted that though Galdós sometimes revised his works (this was particularly true for the ending of several novels), Hernández Suárez provides no notes that would call such textual matters to the user's attention. One would be entitled to believe that the texts of all Spanish editions are the same. A note at the end of the Spanish section of those novels whose endings were changed or in which numerous textual changes were made might have referred the reader to pertinent critical studies on this point.
In this section Hernández Suárez lists four reviews (pp. 48, 86, 137). He would have done better either to have listed all known reviews along with the edition or translation reviewed or listed all reviews in a special section of volume two when it appears. It makes no sense to list only four reviews of the hundreds that must exist.
Part III, pp. 171-348, is a bibliography of the Episodios nacionales with the same arrangement as part II. Part IV, pp. 350-390 is «Teatro». Part V, pp. 392-396, is «Adaptaciones teatrales» and presents data on six plays based on Galdós' novels dramatized by others. Part VI, pp. 398-410, «Narraciones» presents data on 23 short pieces of fiction and Memoranda.
Part VII, pp. 412-440, provides a description and contents of the twelve volumes of the Obras inéditas edited by Alberto Ghiraldo. Hernández Suárez has not located the original publication of the vast majority of the works printed in this collection of Obras inéditas. In view of Shoemaker's remarks concerning Ghiraldo's editing of material from the Buenos Aires La prensa, it might be helpful to know the publication source of the original, so that this could be used rather than the Ghiraldo version.
Part VIII, pp. 442-444 is «Memorias». Part IX, pp. 446-460 is «Prólogos». Part X, pp. 462-470 is «Viajes». Part XI, pp. 472-478 is «Discursos». Part XII, pp. 481-482 is «Poesías». Part XIII, pp. 485-515 is «Artículos» arranged by journal and material is chronologically listed under the name of the journal.
—149→Part XIV, «Cartas», pp. 517-532, provides bibliographical data on Galdós's published correspondence. These forty-two references are valuable because they reprint the text of slightly more than a dozen letters, which will allow scholars to have more ready access to them as some of them were published originally in newspapers and periodicals that are not readily available. Hernández Suárez has done all Galdosians a great favor in this section of his bibliography.
It is to be noted that Hernández Suárez omits from this list William H. Shoemaker, «Una amistad literaria: La correspondencia epistolar entre Galdós y Narciso Oller», Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras, 30; 247-306 (1963-1964). One could with little effort expand this section.
Part XV, p. 533, provides data on Galdós' translation of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers. Part XVI, pp. 539-541, is «Misceláneas», i. e., «Declaraciones» and «Entrevistas». The index covers pp. 545-553. Unfortunately there is no title index or index of editors and translators.
One is struck by the fact that many bibliographical sources such as the Index translationum, the printed catalogs of such libraries as the Library of Congress and the British Museum, Ludmilla Buketoff Turkevich, Spanish literature in Russian and in the Soviet Union 1734-1964 (Metuchen, The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1967), pp. 143-148, national bibliographies and the 1965 Harvard Ph. D. dissertation by Leo Jerome Hoar, «Pérez Galdós and his critics, Galdós and the Novelas contemporáneas as seen in the Spanish press of his day», apparently were not available to Hernández Suárez or as in the case of the Index transtationum not fully utilized.
Our list of omissions is made not with the idea of being critical of Hernández Suárez, for it would be hard to produce a comprehensive bibliography of an author of Galdós' importance without the assistance of a rather large body of correspondents scattered throughout the leading countries of the world, but it is hoped that it will indicate some of the types of material which for one reason or another Hernández Suárez found it impossible to include.
The use of Turkevich would have provided data on fourteen Russian and Lithuanian translations (see items 852-55, 858, 860-63, 866, 868-71) as well as a translation of a Pérez Galdós short story found in item No. 1759. In addition the use of this volume would have provided additional data on the Russian items included such as the name(s) of some of the translators and would have provided the Russian titles of certain of the translations for which Hernández Suárez provides only the title of the Spanish original.
One-of the largest bibliographical gaps in the Hernández Suárez bibliography is that of Galdós' publications in newspapers and periodicals that he was unable to examine and list. Thus, on p. 506 he writes: «Galdós publicó numerosos artículos en el diario La Prensa de Buenos Aires... A pesar de nuestros esfuerzos nos ha sido imposible conseguir la relación completa de los artículos de don Benito. Anotamos los siguientes, reproducidos en periódicos de Las Palmas». He then lists two items. We now know thanks to William H. Shoemaker, Las cartas desconocidas de Galdós en «La Prensa» de Buenos Aires (Madrid, 1973) that this Argentine newspaper published 176 «cartas» or articles by Galdós.
—150→On p. 504, Hernández Suárez disposes of Galdós' contributions to the Revista del movimiento intelectual de Europa in seven lines. He notes that Leo J. Hoar's, Jr, edition of these articles (Madrid, Insula, 1968) reprints forty articles by Galdós that appeared in this periodical. He notes that «Muchos de ellos tratan los mismos temas o son fragmentos de los publicados en La Nación». Individuals who wish data on contributions to this Revista... will not find it in this bibliography. They will be forced to consult the Hoar compilation.
Access to the Hoar dissertation would have allowed him to expand his data concerning selections from the Novelas contemporáneas published in Spanish newspapers during his lifetime. Hoar notes that «Many of these secondary publications or fragments were often published in the press to coincide with the publication of, and create interest in, the novel from which they were taken, or, in order to celebrate some event directly related to Galdós and his career» (leaf 419).
The following list shows several dozen items that I do not find in the Hernández Suárez bibliography:
La batalla de los Arapiles:
«The battle of Salamanca: a tale of the Napoleonic war», tr.: R. Ogden, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, 55:721-822 (1895).
Cádiz:
Kadisa, tr.: E. Plaudis, Riga, Latzgosizdat, 1961, 291 pp,
La campaña del Maestrazgo:
«La campaña del Maestrazgo», Cojo ilustrado (Caracas), 8:469-470 (1899). Chapters 14, 24.
Los condenados:
«Una escena de Los condenados, el último drama de Pérez Galdós», Revista Azul, 3: 39-40 (1895).
La Corte de Carlos IV:
«The first night of a famous play, in the year 1807», tr.: Clara Bell in C. D. Warner, Library of the world's best literature, N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1896, 11:6163-6166; also in The Columbia University course in literature, N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1929, 8:203-204.
Doña Perfecta:
Doña Perfecta. Misericordia, nota preliminar de Teresa Silva Tena, México, Porrúa, 1968, 257 pp. (Colección «Sepan Cuantos», 107).
«El combate», William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, editors, Modern Spanish prose reading 1830-1930, N. Y., D. Appleton-Century, 1936, pp. 143-54.
—151→There are also printings of 1900 and 1902 of the Marsh text edition and a 1931 edition of the Lewis text edition of this novel.
Doña Perfecta... N. Y., P. F. Collier, n. d., 333 pp. (Foreign Classical Romances, 14).
Doña Perfecta, tr.: Egon Hartmann, Berlin, Aufbau-Verlag, 1963, 297 pp.
Lady Perfecta, tr.: Mary Wharton, London, Unwin, 1894, vii, 267 pp.
«Doña Perfecta's daughter», tr.: M. J. Serrano, C. D. Warner, Library of the world's best literature, N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1896, 11:6166-6169; also in The Columbia University course in literature, N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1929, 8:205-207.
«The disagreement continued to increase and threatened to become discord», tr.: M. J. Serrano in Seymour Resnick and Jeanne Passmantier, An anthology of Spanish literature in English translation, N. Y., Frederick Ungar, 1958, 2:504-510 (apparently the same as item 42, page 49 that Hernández Suárez gives as being published in Great Britain).
«Orbajosa», tr.: David Hannay in John Clark Ridpath, The Ridpath Library of Universal literature, N. Y., Globe, 1898 and N. Y., Fifth Avenue Library Society, 1899, 11:37-38. Pp. 38-39 of this volume present three short excerpts from this novel by an anonymous translator.
Electra:
The anonymous translation listed by Hernández Suárez also appears in Philo M. Buck, ed: An anthology of world literature, N. Y., Macmillan, 1934, pp. 942-75.
La familia de León Roch:
Leon Roch: a romance, N. Y., W. S. Gottesberger, 1888, 2 vols.
«Florencia...»:
«Florencia: Impresiones de un viaje», El Imparcial, el 30 de 1897. Hernández Suárez notes its publication in Ghiraldo's Obras inéditas of Galdós works, but does not provide data on its first appearance. This is typical of the way he treats much of the material published in this set.
Gerona:
On p. 218, the translator should be listed as Susette M. Taylor and not M. Taylor Susette.
Gloria:
«Religion and Love» selection from Gloria translated by Clara Bell in The International library of famous literature compiled by N. H. Dole, et al., New York, Merrill & Baker, 1898, 20:9346-9354.
—152→Halma:
«Páginas nuevas: Un capítulo de Halma», Revista Azul, 4:179-180 (1896).
La incógnita:
«In the Spanish Cortes», excerpts selected and translated by R. Ogden, Critic, 17:134-135 (Sept. 13, 1890).
«Junio».
«In praise of June», tr.: Jean Raymond Bidwell, Living Age, 225: 741-749 (1900).
La de Bringas:
«Above-stairs in a royal palace», tr.: William H. Bishop, C. D. Warner, Library of the world's best literature, N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1897, 11:6170-6173.
La loca de la casa:
La matta di casa, tr.: Antonio Gasparelli, Catania, Ed. Paoline, 1967, 194 pp.
Marianela:
Marianela, México, Editorial Orión, 1966, 189 pp. (Colección literaria Cervantes).
Marianela, tr.: Mary Wharton, London, Digby and Long, 1893, 354 pp.
Miau:
Miau, the J. M. Cohen translation listed on page 117 as having only appeared in England has also been published as follows: Baltimore, Penguin, 1963, 282 pp.; Dufour Editions, Chester Springs, Pa., 1965, 311 pp.; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967, 283 pp. (Penguin Classics).
Excerpt tr.: Ellen Watson, Richard Garnett, L. Vallee and A. Brandl, The universal anthology, N. Y., Merrill and Baker, 1899, 31:87-101.
Miau, tr.: Jean Marey, Paris, Les éditeurs français réunis, 1968, 413 pp.
Misericordia:
Misericordia, México, Editorial Orión, 1964, 258 pp. (Colección literaria Cervantes).
«Tres mendigos de la iglesia», William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, Modern Spanish prose readings 1830-1930, N. Y., D. Appleton Century, 1936, pp. 154-156.
Compassion, tr.: Joan MacLean, N. Y., American R. D. M. Corp., 1966, 159 pp. (A Study Master publication T-42.)
—153→«La mula y el buey»
In E. C. Hills and Louise Reinhardt, eds., Spanish short stories, Boston, D. C. Heath, 1910, pp. 61-78.
«The mule and the ox», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories, Boston, D. C. Heath, 1910, pp. 61-78.
«The mule and the ox», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories from French and Spanish writers, Chicago, McClurg, 1892, pp. 177-199.
Prim:
Excerpt in J. B. Trend, Civilization of Spain, London, Oxford University Press, 1944, pp. 165-167 (Home University Library); 1967 ed., pp. 104-106 (Oxford Paperback University Series, Opus 19).
«La princesa y el granuja»:
«Princess and the ragamuffin», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories from French and Spanish writers, Chicago, McClurg, 1892, pp. 59-89.
«Theros»:
«Theros», Revista Moderna, 4:35-40 (1901).
Torquemada en la hoguera:
«Torquemada in the flames», tr.: Willard Trask, Ángel Flores, ed., Great Spanish stories, N. Y., Modern Library, 1956, pp. 113-146.
Trafalgar:
Trafalgar, tr.: Clara Bell, London, Kegan Paul (also published by Trübner), both 1884, 255 pp.
«Trafalgar», tr.: Clara Bell, Henry Major Tomlinson, Great sea stories of all nations, Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday Doran, 1930, 1937, pp. 816-830; also London, Harrap, 1930.
Trafalgar, tr.: Vincenzo Josia, Roma, Gremese, 1967, 154 pp.
Trafalgar, tr.: R. Pohlebkin, Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1961, 184 pp.
Hernández Suárez lists only the 1921 ed. of Trafalgar edited by F. A. Kirkpatrick. According to the copyright page of the 1961 printing it was first published in 1905 and was reprinted in 1921, 1930, 1951 and 1961. His 13-line note on this edition misspells Kirkpatrick, twice writes Cambrige for Cambridge and first appears as firts.
«Vino»:
«Vino», Revista Azul, 2:417-418 (1895).
Zaragoza:
«Una guerrilla», William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, eds., Modern Spanish prose readings 1830-1930, N. Y., D. Appleton-Century, 1936, pp. 135-143.
—154→«El sitio de Zaragoza», David Rubio and Henri C. Néel, Spanish anthology, N. Y., Prentice-Hall, 1934, pp. 172-175.
Saragosa, tr.: Anna Georgieva, Sofia, Nar. Mladez, 1968, 207 pp.
I fail to find the following anthologies based on Galdós' works listed: Galdós: selección hecha por Margarita Mayo, Madrid, Instituto - escuela, 1922, 229 pp., El pensamiento vivo de [Galdós] presentado por [Arturo Capdevila], Buenos Aires, Editorial Losada [1944], 238 pp. (Biblioteca del pensamiento vivo, 28), Antología; selección y prólogo por Amado de Miguel, Madrid, Doncel, 1960, 144 pp. (Lo español y los españoles, 6).
Individuals may explore in greater detail some facet of the publication history of Galdós' works, but it seems to me that Hernández Suárez has well covered Galdós' works published in Spain. As we learn more concerning Galdós' contributions to newspapers and periodicals additional data will be discovered with the passage of time. Yet it is good now to have this bibliography made available to students of Galdós and his works. In his «Nota preliminar» Hernández Suárez writes: «No han faltado las sorpresas, como son los primerizos trabajos de Galdós aparecidos en la revista juvenil La Antorcha, los artículos publicados por Galdós en el periódico El Omnibus, enviados desde Madrid y firmados con el pseudónimo 'H. de V.', hasta ahora desconocido; la fecha exacta de la primera edición de La Fontana de Oro...» (xii). It will be noted that Hernández Suárez has unearthed much that is new and for his time («Comenzamos a trabajar en la Bibliografía de Galdós hace unos siete años y este primer tomo lleva dos en la imprenta», xi) and effort galdosianos throughout the world can only be most grateful. I, for one, look forward with interest to the second volume of this Galdós bibliography and know that as with this volume my knowledge will be greatly extended of both the man and his works.
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY