The Pérez Galdós Editions Project

An introduction to Benito Pérez Galdós

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is generally recognised as Spain's greatest writer of fiction after Cervantes, and as ranking among the great 19th-century realists with Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. His work, like theirs, evokes by its very nature an interdisciplinary response; knowledge of the novels and knowledge of their age (though never simply identical) remain inseparable.

Yet the very scale of his literary output has in some ways worked against this: 31 novels, 46 Episodios Nacionales, 23 plays, and the equivalent of twenty volumes of shorter fiction, journalism and other writings. Much still remains to be done by way of systematic editing, and still more with regard to detailed concordancing and indexing.

The project

The Pérez Galdós Editions Project was established in April 1996 by the University of Sheffield Department of Hispanic Studies within the University's Humanities Research Institute. At its core is the Institutional Fellowship funded by the British Academy and supported by the Humanities Research Institute's wide experience in the electronic processing of major bodies of text.

The specific four-year undertaking to which the Fellowship is linked is concerned with the four novels centred on the Madrid moneylender Francisco Torquemada, Torquemada en la hoguera, Torquemada en la Cruz, Torquemada en el purgatorio, and Torquemada y San Pedro.

Click on https://www.dhi.ac.uk/galdos/ to link the electronic edition of Torquemada en la hoguera.

This is seen as the opening phase of a longer-term development, involving the active collaboration of Galdós scholars from many centres, especially those from Spanish universities. Formal collaborative arrangements are being developed through the offices of the Spanish Cultural Counsellor in London.

The ultimate goal of the project is a standard scholarly presentation, in the form outlined here, of the entire Novelas españolas contemporáneas.

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