witzerland, the daughter of Juan Nicholas Boehl de Faber, a German
merchant in Cadiz, who had married a Spanish lady of noble family. A
cultivated man he was, greatly interested in the past of Spain, and had
published a collection of old Castilian ballads. From him Cecilia
derived her love of Spanish folk-lore. Her earliest years were spent
going from place to place with her parents, now Spain, now Paris, now
Germany. From six to sixteen she was at school in Hamburg. Joining her
family in Cadiz, she was married at the age of seventeen. Left a widow
within a short time, she married after five years the wealthy Marquis de
Arco-Hermaso. His palace in Seville became a social centre, for his
young wife, beautiful, witty, and accomplished, was a born leader of
society. She now had to the full the opportunity of studying those types
of Spanish ladies and gentlemen whose gay, inconsequent chatter she has
so brilliantly reproduced in her novels dealing with high life. The
Marquis died in 1835, and after two years she again married, this time
the lawyer De Arrom. Losing his own money and hers, he went as Spanish
consul to Australia, where he died in 1863. She remained behind, retired
to the country, and turned to literature. From 1857 to 1866 she lived in
the Alcazar in Seville, as governess to the royal children of Spain. She
died April 7th, 1877, in Seville,--somewhat solitary, for a new life of
ideas flowing into Spain, and opposing her intense conservatism,
isolated her from companionship.

Fernan Caballero began to publish when past fifty, attained instant
success, and never again reached the high level of her first book. 'La
Gaviota' (The Sea-Gull) appeared in 1849 in the pages of a Madrid daily
paper, and at once made its author famous. 'The Family of Alvoreda,' an
earlier story, was published after her first success. Washington Irving,
who saw the manuscript of this, encouraged her to go on. Her novels were
fully translated, and she soon had a European reputation. Her work may
be divided into three classes: novels of social life in Seville, such as
'Elia' and 'Clemencia'; novels of Andalusian peasant life, as 'The
Family of Alvoreda' ('La Gaviota' uniting both); and a number of short
stories pointing a moral or embodying a proverb. She published besides,
in 1859, the first collection of Spanish fairy tales.

Fernan Caballero created the modern Spanish novel. For two hundred years
after Cervantes there are few names of not