Emilia Pardo Bazán. The challenge of modernity (El reto de la modernidad) is the title of the exhibition on display at the Biblioteca Nacional de España until 26 September.
The exhibition traces the multifaceted character of Emilia Pardo Bazán (La Coruña, 1851-Madrid, 1921), novelist, influential cultural journalist, politician, literary critic and historian, playwright, prolific and resolutely modern short-story writer; cultural entrepreneur with a magazine and a publishing house -Nuevo Teatro Crítico and La Biblioteca de la Mujer, 1890- which were pioneers in the dissemination in Spain of Russian literature (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev) and of the French and British debates on feminism, with the translation and commentary of the works of John Stuart Mill and August Bebel. The exhibition seeks to visually expressively convey to the viewer a work and a life that are crucial for revising and updating the literary and intellectual history of the last third of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. To this end, it brings together some two hundred works, including printed books, manuscripts, engravings and photographs, among others, from both the Biblioteca Nacional de España and other institutions.
