Book Description

Excerpt from Studies in Spanish-American Literature It is only the other day that cultured men in the Spanish motherland began to manifest any real interest in the literature of their one-time colonies in the Western World. Hardly at all before Juan Valera, the charming novelist and discerning critic, wrote his gossipy American Letters, (1888-1890) did well trained men and much less, of course, the ordinary reader in the Iberian peninsula realize the ambitious activity of the many writers of the 19th century, scattered throughout the countries lying between the southern bounds of the United States and Tierra del Fuego; and not until Menendez y Pelayo prepared for the Spanish Academy his Anthology of Spanish-American Poets (1893-95) was there any considerable knowledge in Spain of the great output of Spanish verse in the New World from the period of settlement down to our own times. Genial spirit though he was, Valera was unable to avoid a certain display of that condescending tolerance of the European critic for the products of the colonial mind which we in the United States have been so accustomed to find in the attitude of the British critics and essayist toward our own belles lettres. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.