In the notes, as to what to comment on, I have been guided largely by my experience with classes that read the story.
In the accent marks and the alphabetical order of ll and rr I have followed the 14th edition of the Academy's dictionary, 1914.
I owe thanks to several persons for various help and interest: Miss Helen Greer, a former student of mine, worked on the vocabulary; my colleague F. L. Phillips, a seasoned Spanish scholar, gave me several helpful ideas; Principal E. L. C. Morse, of Chicago, a long-standing lover of Spanish and traveler in Spanish countries, made several suggestions that were useful; Professor Frank La Motte, of Milwaukee, helped with intense interest; and Dr. Homero Serís, of the University of Illinois, worked on the Spanish exercises and the vocabulary.
II. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1833-1891)
Our author began at fifteen writing for publication, and as a young man was already well known and popular. His great ambition at first was to write plays, and he tried a dozen without making any worth while. So nowadays the plays have all disappeared and are no longer offered for sale among his works. But in the plays he learned to make dialogue, and the novels are well filled with that variety of narration. His poems had a fate like that of the plays.
Alarcón's style is largely colored by his newspaper training in his earlier years. He is rapid, clever, often slangy, often frivolous, quotes Latin badly several times, likes the sensational, forgets and contradicts previous statements sometimes (just as Cervantes did), has an eye out for funny things. He became a great story-teller, entertaining, amusing, and enlightening. He often takes too much pains to make fiction look like exact truth (para tomar como cierto lo fingido) and history.
DATES AND WORKS
| Alarcón's birth | 1833 |
| Wrote first El Descubrimiento y Paso del Cabo de Buena Esperanza | 1848 |
| El Final de Norma | 1850 |
| Editor of El Látigo | 1853 |
| First drama, El Hijo Pródigo | 1857 |
| First great success, El Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra de África, 2 vols. | 1851 |
| De Madrid a Nápoles, 2 vols. | 1869 |
| Alarcón was in politics | 1863 to 1874 |
| Appointed minister plenipotentiary to Norway and Sweden | 1868 |
| Short stories and novels appeared all through this period from | 1864 to 1874 |
| Poems | 1870 |
| La Alpujarra | 1874 |
| El Sombrero de Tres Picos | 1874 |
| El Escándalo | 1875 |
| Admitted to the Academy | 1877 |
| El Niño de la Bola | 1880 |
| La Pródiga | 1881 |
| El Capitán Veneno | 1881 |
| Alarcón's death | 1891 |
III. El Capitán Veneno
The story here presented (El Capitán Veneno) and El Sombrero de Tres Picos are now the most read of all of Alarcón's works. El Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra de África brought the most fame and money, for at that time the excitement of the country over the war, and the patriotism of the nation, combined for Alarcón's good fortune.