Juan Valera
1824–1905
Biography
Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano was born in 1824 at Cabra, in the province of Córdoba, and died in Madrid in 1905. He studied law at the University of Granada and entered the diplomatic service in the late 1840s, serving in Naples, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Dresden and St Petersburg before returning to Madrid. Later he represented Spain as minister in Lisbon, Washington and Brussels, and as ambassador in Vienna. He also took part in politics and for a time led public instruction. In 1900 he was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
Valera is remembered above all as a novelist and as a stylist. Critics have long admired the clean, elegant Spanish of his prose, and his best-known novel, Pepita Jiménez, first appeared in serial form in 1874. It has been translated into many languages. Its hero is a young seminarian who slowly comes to see the emptiness of his calling as he is drawn to Pepita, a young widow. Its close look at a man's vanity and self-deception is typical of the realist fiction Valera wrote.
Several of his novels are on this site. Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino (1875), Doña Luz (1879) and Pasarse de listo are his work from the years when he was stepping back from active politics, and they show the same care for language and the same close attention to character as Pepita Jiménez, which is also here. If you are new to Valera, Pepita Jiménez is the natural place to begin.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Doña Luz
by Juan Valera
Doña Luz, the unmarried daughter of a marquis living quietly in an Andalusian village, forms a deep friendship with Father Enrique, an ailing missionary home from the Philippines, who loves her in silence, while the dashing Don Jaime Pimentel courts her for her fortune. Valera's…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino
by Juan Valera
Faustino, a young man of fine talents and a poor sense of the real world, drifts from a provincial town to Madrid with grand ambitions and a long line of romantic illusions. Valera's long novel is a gentle, ironical portrait of a generation raised on romanticism. This book uses…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Pasarse de listo
by Juan Valera
A light comedy of Madrid society in which a clever, calculating man overreaches himself and is caught in his own schemes. Valera's novel of 1877 pokes fun at those who are too clever by half.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Pepita Jiménez
by Juan Valera
A young seminarian returns to his Andalusian village and falls for the beautiful young widow Pepita Jiménez, his father's friend. Valera tells it as letters, then as a narrator's account, a gentle study of faith and desire.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.