These _Spanish Short Stories_ are, for the most part, realistic pictures
of the manners and customs of modern Spain, written by masters of
Spanish prose. All were written in the second half of the nineteenth
century or in the first decade of the twentieth,--except the story by
Larra, which was written about seventy-five years ago. And all describe
recent conditions,--except the tale, partly historical and partly
legendary, by Bécquer, which goes back to the invasion of Spain by the
French under Napoleon in the early years of the nineteenth century; the
story by Larra, which, however, is nearly as true of Castile to-day as
it was when written; and Trueba's story, which is partly legendary,
partly symbolic, and partly realistic. The stories by Bécquer and Pérez
Galdós contain incidents that are supernatural, and those by Fernán
Caballero and Alarcón have romantic settings that are highly improbable;
but all the stories are, in the main, true to the every-day life of
contemporary Spain.
The Spanish stories in this collection have been arranged, so far as
possible, in the order of difficulty; but some instructors will
doubtless prefer to read them in chronological order, or, better still,
in an order determined by the "school", or literary affiliations, of
each author. This latter arrangement is difficult to make, and it must
be, at the best, somewhat arbitrary. But to those who wish to study in
these stories the growth of contemporary Spanish fiction, it is
suggested that the authors be taken up in the order in which they are
given in the Introduction.
To the stories by Spanish authors have been added two by
Spanish-American writers,--the one a native of Costa Rica, the other of
Chile. These stories are excellent and well worth reading. For a fuller
statement regarding them, see the last pages of the Introduction.
The texts have been taken from standard editions (see the first note to
each story). The integrity of the texts has been scrupulously preserved,
with only the two following changes: (1) the orthography has been made
to conform to that of the latest editions of the _Dictionary_ and the
_Grammar_ of the Royal Spanish Academy; and (2) a few omissions from the
texts have been made, all of which are marked by five suspensive points
(.....).
The Vocabulary contains the more irregular verb-forms, and it has also
descriptions of the important places and biographies of the noted men
and women that are mentioned in the texts.
The editors offer these _Spanish Short Stories_ as suitable material to
be read immediately after a beginners' book.