Chapter XI
Reading edition
An almost complete record of eighteenth-century literature is supplied by Sr. D. Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto, Marqués de Valmar, in his Histórica Crítica de la poesía castellana en el siglo XVIII. (1893), a revised and augmented edition of the classic preface to Rivadeneyra, vols. lxi., lxiii., and lxvii. D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori's invaluable Iriarte y su época (1897) sheds much light on the literary history of the period, and D. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo's Historia de las Ideas estéticas en España (vol. iii. part ii., 1886) should be read as a complement to all other works. Antonio María Alcalá Galiano's Historia de la literatura española, francesa, inglesa, é italiano en el siglo XVIII. (1845) is acute, but somewhat obsolete. I should recommend as an honest, useful monograph the life of Sarmiento published under the title of El Gran Gallego (La Coruña, 1895) by D. Antolín López Peláez.
CHAPTERS XII AND XIII
The only summary of the period is Padre Francisco Blanco García's Literatura Española en el siglo XIX. (1891): it is extremely uncritical, and is marred by violent personal prejudices intemperately expressed. But it has the merit of existing, and embodies useful information in the way of facts. Gustave Hubbard's Histoire de la littérature contemporaine en Espagne (1876) and Boris de Tannenberg's La Poésie castellane contemporaine (1892) are pleasant but slight. Pedro de Novo y Colsón's Autores dramáticos contemporaneos y joyas del teatro español del siglo XIX. (1881-85), with a preface by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, is conscientiously put together, and will be found very serviceable.