Pérez Galdós, Benito

(born May 10, 1843, Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain—died Jan. 4, 1920, Madrid) Spanish novelist. In the 1870s he began a cycle of 46 short historical novels, Episodios nacionales (1873–1912), that earned him comparison with Honoré de Balzac and Charles Dickens. Some of his finest works chronicle contemporary Spain, including The Disinherited Lady (1881) and his masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta (1886–87), a study of two unhappily married women. His earlier works show a reforming zeal and anticlericalism, but after the 1880s he displayed greater sympathy for Spain and its idiosyncrasies, as in Nazarín (1895), Compassion (1897), and a series featuring the character Torquemada. He also wrote plays, some very popular but of less artistic value. He was regarded as Spain's greatest novelist since Miguel de Cervantes.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica