Spanish · 1843–1920
Benito Pérez Galdós was the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes and the central figure of nineteenth-century Spanish realism. His vast output includes the forty-six-volume Episodios Nacionales, a novelistic history of Spain, and more than thirty contemporary novels, of which Fortunata y Jacinta is the masterpiece. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature but never won.