La Novela Corta
Contents: Series History | Characteristics of the series | Other issues of La Novela Corta |
Series History
Series Director: José de Urquía
Series start date: January 15, 1916, Año I, no. 1 Sor Simona by Benito Pérez de Galdos
Series end date: June 13, 1925, Año X, no. 499 Anima en pena by G. Gómez de la Mata
Total issues: 499, 2nd largest series run for novel magazines/pamphlet novels (Los Contemporáneos was the largest)
Special series:
- Números en homenaje de novelistas del siglo XIX (differentiated by black and green printing instead of usual black and red)
Initial price: 5 céntimos
Last price: 20 céntimos (highest price overall)
Other prices: 10 céntimos
Periodicity: Weekly (Saturdays)
Distribution: Mainly Spain, but internationally distributed
Characteristics of the series
La Novela Corta was a series for literary works excluding drama because of the existence of La Novela Teatral. It was the first and longest running series among those published by Prensa Popular.
It’s goal was to present literature by well-known authors such as Benito Pérez de Galdos, Carmen de Burgos, and Ramón del Valle-Inclán and by acclaimed recent authors to a public that couldn’t afford full size books. Most of the texts published in these pamphlet novels were deemed “inéditas,” meaning “unpublished,” so despite the cheapness of the format, readers were often getting new material. Interestingly, the series claimed that if any material called unpublished in the series had actually been published previously, it was not their fault, but instead the fault of the author who had misled them 1. Over the course of the series, 70 authors wrote 418 of these unpublished novels giving an average of 6 novels per author. 11 of the authors only wrote 1 novel for the series, but other authors like Carmen de Burgos and Diego San José wrote significantly more than the average, with 25 and 26 novels, respectively 2.
In addition to these (generally) previously unpublished novels, La Novela Corta published issues containing classics, adaptations of works, and literary criticism. For example, no. 210 of La Novela Corta is titled Estudio crítico de Galdós.
Other issues of La Novela Corta
In this table you can search for other digitized issues of La Novela Corta not part of the collections of this digital library. Click on the hyperlinked title of an entry to be taken to the facsimile or the catalog record for the facsimile. Multiple years of publication and authors may be selected, you can bound your search by issue number, and you can do a text search on titles.