1
Michael Nimetz, Humor in Galdós (New Haven, Connecticut, 1968), 128-29.
2
Gustavo Correa, Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá, 1967). The relevant chapter en intitled «La presencia de la Naturaleza.»
3
All references are to Benito Pérez Galdós, Obras completas IV and V (Aguilar, Madrid 1941 and 1942).
4
Monroe Z. Hafter, Galdós' Presentation of Isidora in La desheredada», Modern Philology, 60 (1962-63), 23.
5
Alexander A. Parker, «Villaamil -Tragic Victim or Comic Failure?)», Anales Galdosianos, IV (1969), 21.
6
Michael Nimetz, op. cit., 130.
7
Joaquín Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1961), 46.
8
The influence of Charles Dickens on the young Galdós is probably under-estimated, as this study will suggest. In his Memorias de un desmemoriado, Galdós writes of visiting Westminster Abbey during a journey to England, where he sought out the «sepultura reciente» of Dickens:
He further admits that «apenas devorada La comedia humana, de Balzac, me apliqué con loco afán a la copiosa obra de Dickens».
See Benito Pérez Galdós, Memorias de un desmemoriado in Obras completas [Novelas y miscelánea], introducciones de Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, 1971), 1468.
At the same time that Galdós was writing La Fontana de Oro, in 1868, he was also translating Dickens' Pickwick Papers for the pages of the progresista publication La Nación. This translation of Dickens' work represents both a homage and an apprenticeship to Galdós' «maestro más amado».
9
John Carey, The Violent Effigy: A Study of Dickens' Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 88.
10
So important is Galdós' use of effigies and artifacts in such publications as La Nación, Revista de la Semana, and other journals to which he contributed in his youth that I am preparing a study devoted to that subject.