A Stranger in My Own Land: Sofia Casanova, a Spanish Writer in the European Fin de Siecle

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments I thank the many people and organizations that have helped me in various ways during the writing of this book: The Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Newby Trust, Oxford University (through the Labouchere and de Osma Funds), the government of Poland, the Xunta de Galicia, Hertford College Oxford (including the Starun Fund), the Queen’s College Oxford (including the Laming Fund), Merton College Oxford, and the University of Liverpool all provided financial and material support. Gerald Stone, my master’s supervisor, introduced me to Polish studies and started me down the long road in search of Casanova. John Rutherford, my doctoral supervisor, not only helped me reach the end of that road but also introduced me to Galicia and Galician studies—I could not have asked for a more inspiring guide. Catherine Davies and Jacqueline Rattray constructively and encouragingly examined the doctoral thesis on which this book is based. For their love and their confidence, I thank my husband, Steven Barge, and my parents, Angela and Keith Hooper, who listened to, read, and lived with this project for nearly a decade. Friends and colleagues in Oxford, Liverpool, and elsewhere who contributed moral and intellectual support include Nina Taylor-Terlecki, Manolo Puga Moruxa, Núria Martí i Girbau, Nuria Capdevila Argüelles, Lourdes Lorenzo García, Claire Williams, Kathy Bacon, and Anja Louis. I am grateful to Ofelia Alayeto, Casanova’s first biographer, for her generosity; to the Vanderbilt University Press reviewers for their constructive readings of the manuscript; and to Betsy Phillips at Vanderbilt University Press for bringing the project to life. Sections of Chapter 1 first appeared as “Las Autoras de unas Novelitas? Spanish Women Writers, 1890–1916,” in Making Waves Anniversary Volume: Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, edited by Ann­ Davies, Par Kumaraswami, and Claire Williams ([Newcastle: Cambridge x A Stranger in My Own Land Scholars Publishing, 2008], 43–59). A very early version of Chapter 2 first appeared as “Fin de Siècle Anxieties and Future(s) Perfect: Sofía Casanova’s El doctor Wolski (1894)” (Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 79.2 [2002]: 175–87); sections of Chapter 3 first appeared in “Reading Spain’s African Vocation: The Figure of the Moorish Priest in Three Novels of the Fin de Siglo (1891–1907)” (Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 40.1 [2006]: 175–99); and sections of Chapter 5 first appeared in “Girl, Interrupted: The Distinctive History of Galician Women’s Narrative” (Romance Studies 21.2 [2003]: 101–14). I am grateful to the editors at Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Romance Studies for their kind permission to incorporate revised versions of this material. A Stranger in My Own Land ...