Benito Perez Galdos has been described as 'the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes.' His work constitutes a major contribution to the nineteenth-century novel, rivalling that of Dickens of Balzac and making him an essential candidate for any course on the fiction of the period.
Jo Labanyi's study is supported by a wide-rangting introduction, a section of contemporary comment, headnotes to each piece and helpful appendix material.

Introduction; Chapter ronology Chronology; Part 1 Contemporary Documents; Chapter 1 Some Observations on the Contemporary Novel in Spain, Benito Pérez Galdós; Chapter 2 Present-day Society as Material for the Novel, Benito Pérez Galdós; Chapter 3 Preface to 1913 Edition of Misericordia, Benito Pérez Galdós; Chapter 4 Review of Part 1 of La Desheredada, Leopoldo Alas; Chapter 5 Review of Tristana; Part 2 Critical Readings; Chapter 6 The Spoken Word and Fortunata and Jacinta, Stephen Gilman; Chapter 7 Reality and Fiction in the Novels of Galdós, Gerald Gillespie; Chapter 8 The Use of Distance in Galdós's La de Bringas, Peter A. Bly; Chapter 9 Individual, Class and Society in Fortunata and Jacinta, John H. Sinnigen; Chapter 10 Galdós and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Peter B. Goldman; Chapter 11 Our Friend Manso and the Game of Fictive Autonomy, John W. Kronik; Chapter 12 Identities and Differences in the Torquemada Novels of Galdós, Diane F. Urey; Chapter 13 Silences and Changes of Direction, Carlos Blanco Aguinaga; Chapter 14 Angel Guerra, or the Monster Novel, Noël M. Valis; Chapter 15 Galdós's Gloria, Catherine A. Jagoe;