His father was Don Serafín Baroja. Born in San Sebastián in 1840, Don Serafín was a well known mining engineer, and enjoyed no small amount of fame as a writer. As far as literature is concerned, he is perhaps best known for his songs and ballads written in the Basque tongue. He composed the libretto of the first Basque opera ever produced, the music of which was by Santesteban. He is said to have been responsible for the libretto of one other opera—a Spanish one.
His son, Don Pío, decided to take up the study of medicine, and he went to Valencia for that purpose. He received his doctorate in 1893, when he was but twenty-one years of age.
He practised his profession in Cestona, in the Province of Guipúzcoa. Life in that small, provincial town proved very dull indeed, and he decided that the medical profession was not his proper sphere. After two years in Cestona, he moved to Madrid. There he tried his hand at several kinds of business. He even set up a bakery in partnership with his brother Ricardo, a painter and engraver of no mean ability! We do not hear of his return to the practice of medicine. Evidently he had proved to his own satisfaction that he was not suited to it.
After he had failed in several attempts at business, he began writing for the newspapers. He succeeded in obtaining positions on El País, El Imparcial, and El Globo. His success in this line of work inspired him to further effort, and, from that time on (1900), he devoted himself entirely to literature.
His first published work was a collection of short stories, or sketches, entitled Vidas Sombrías. Among them are some exquisite pictures of Basque life. This volume was closely followed by a novel, La casa de Aizgorri. These two books scarcely caused a ripple in the literary circles of the Cortes. Certainly, Baroja cannot claim to have sprung into fame over night! His next attempt was a humorous novel which he called Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox. It was scarcely more successful than the first two.
His next book, Camino de perfección, was characterized as “a book of apparently sane tendencies”! From that time on, he became a recognized figure in the Spanish literature of the day. Idilios vascos appeared that same year, and in 1903 he produced El mayorazgo de Labraz, a novel that has been compared most favourably (by Spanish critics) with the best of contemporary novels both in Spain and abroad.
In all lists of the works of Pío Baroja, most of his novels are divided into trilogies. For the sake of convenience, I shall follow the same plan, without any attempt at chronological order:
Tierra vasca (Basque Country): La casa de Aizgorri; El mayorazgo de Labraz; Zalacaín, el aventurero.
La vida fantastica (Life Fantastic): Camino de perfección; Inventos, aventuras y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox; Paradox, rey.
La Raza (Race): La dama errante; La ciudad de la niebla; El árbol de la ciencia.