Dona Luz

Juan Valera (1824-1905), one of nineteenth-century Spain's most respected authors, wrote novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and literary criticism. The unifying thread of his work is "art for art's sake," that is, beauty as the end and purpose of inspiration and creativity. Two examples in long works of this aesthetic credo are his novelsPepita Jimenez (1874) and the novel translated here, Dona Luz (1879).

Robert M. Fedorchek is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Fairfield University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut and studied at Yale and the Universities of Madrid and Lisbon. He is the translator of ten other Bucknell University Press publications.

Beth Wietelmann Bauer is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Brown University. She received her M.A. from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Focusing primarily on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish peninsular literature, her research and teaching interests incorporate the critical perspectives of women's and cultural studies and examine literary representations of the interplay of gender, class, and changing economic realities.