Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber Ruiz de Larrea

Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl und Lütkens y Ruiz de Larrea
Born - 24 December 1796 - Morges, Vaud
Died - 7 April 1877 (aged 80)
Language Spanish
Nationality Spanish

Fernán Caballero (24 December 1796, Morges, Vaud – 7 April 1877) was the pseudonym adopted from the name of a village in the province of Ciudad Real by the Spanish novelist Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber y Ruiz de Larrea

Born at Morges in Switzerland, Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl und Lütkens y Ruiz de Larrea was the daughter of Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber, a Hamburg merchant, who lived long in Spain, married a native of Cádiz, and is creditably known to students of Spanish literature as the editor of the Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas (1821–1825), and the Teatro español anterior a Lope de Vega (1832). She was educated principally at Hamburg, visited Spain in 1815, and in 1816 married Antonio Planells y Bardaxi, an infantry captain of bad character. In the following year Planells was killed in action, and in 1822 the young widow married Francisco Ruiz del Arco, Marqués de Arco Hermoso, an officer in one of the Spanish household regiments.

Upon the death of Arco Hermoso in 1835, the marquesa found herself in straitened circumstances, and in less than two years she married Antonio Arrom de Ayala, a man considerably her junior. Arrom was appointed consul in Australia, engaged in business enterprises and made money; but unfortunate speculations drove him to commit suicide in 1859. Ten years earlier the name of Fernán Caballero became famous in Spain as the author of La Gaviota. The writer had already published in German an anonymous romance, Sole (1840), and curiously enough the original draft of La Gaviota was written in French. This novel, translated into Spanish by José Joaquín de Mora [es], appeared as the feuilleton of El Heraldo (1849), and was received with marked favor. Eugenio de Ochoa, a prominent critic of the day, ratified the popular judgment, and hopefully proclaimed the writer to be a rival of Walter Scott. No other Spanish book of the 19th century has obtained such instant and universal recognition. Translated into most European languages, it is the best of its author's works, with the possible exception of La Familia de Alvareda (which was written, first of all, in German).[1]

Less successful attempts are Lady Virginia and Clemencia; but the short stories entitled Cuadros de Costumbres are interesting in matter and form, and Una en otra and Elia o la Espana treinta años ha are excellent specimens of picturesque narration. It would be difficult to maintain that Fernán Caballero was a great literary artist, but it is certain that she was a born teller of stories and that she has a graceful style very suitable to her purpose. She came into Spain at a most happy moment, before the new order had perceptibly disturbed the old, and she brought to bear not alone a fine natural gift of observation, but a freshness of vision, undulled by long familiarity. She combined the advantages of being both a foreigner and a native.

In later publications she insisted too emphatically upon the moral lesson, and lost much of her primitive simplicity and charm; but we may believe her statement that, though she occasionally idealized circumstances, she was conscientious in choosing for her themes subjects which had occurred in her own experience. Hence she may be regarded as a pioneer in the realistic field, and this historical fact adds to her positive importance. For many years she was the most popular of Spanish writers, and the sensation caused by her death at Seville on 7 April 1877 proved that her truthfulness still attracted readers who were interested in records of national customs and manners.

Her Obras completas are included in the Colección de escritores castellanos: a useful biography by Fernando de Gabriel Ruiz de Apodaca precedes the Últimas producciones de Fernán Caballero (Seville, 1878)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern%C3%A1n_Caballero

Fernán Caballero, pseudonym of Cecilia Böhl von Faber, or Cecilia Böhl de Faber, (born December 24, 1796, Morges, Switzerland—died April 7, 1877, Sevilla, Spain), Spanish writer whose novels and stories depict the language, customs, and folklore of rural Andalusia.

Her father was Johann Niklaus Böhl von Faber, a German businessman who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a well-known critic of Spanish literature. He moved the family in 1813 to Andalusia, which was the native region of his wife. In 1816 their daughter Cecilia married Antonio Planells, a Spanish infantry officer who was killed in action the following year. In 1822 the young widow married the marqués de Arco Hermoso, in whose homes in Sevilla (Seville) and the Andalusian countryside she collected much of the material for her books. Upon his death in 1835 Cecilia found herself in straitened circumstances, and in 1837 she married a much younger man, Antonio de Ayala, whose unfortunate business speculations eventually drove him to suicide in 1859.

Poverty helped persuade Cecilia to publish her writings. Her first and best-known novel, La gaviota (1849; The Seagull), was an immediate success with the public. No other Spanish book of the 19th century obtained such instant and universal recognition. It describes the career of a fisherman’s daughter who marries a German physician, deserts her husband to become an opera singer, falls in love with a bullfighter, and eventually returns home, widowed and with her voice gone, to wed a village barber. La gaviota is marred by its obtrusive morality and slow pace, but its lively, sympathetic presentations of country people and their conversation are utterly convincing. The book is considered a precursor of the 19th-century Spanish realistic novel. It is also the first outstanding example of a novel influenced by costumbrismo, the literary movement that depicted in short prose sketches the rapidly changing customs of rural Spain, almost always with a somewhat nostalgic attitude.

After the success of La gaviota, Caballero wrote many more works of fiction, including the novel Clemencia (1852) and the short-story collection Cuadros de costumbres populares andaluces (1852; “Sketches of Everyday Andalusian Life”). She died after a long period of ill health, thrice-widowed and childless. She was famous for her defense of the traditional virtues of Spain—Roman Catholic, monarchist, and rural—against the upsurge of 19th-century liberalism.

Among early costumbristas were Mariano José de Larra and Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, both of whom wrote about Madrid, and Serafín Estébanez Calderón, who wrote about Andalusia. Significant costumbrista writers of the last half of the 19th century included Fernán Caballero and Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, both of whom wrote novels set in Andalusia, and José María de Pereda, who wrote about the mountainous region of northern Castile.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fernan-Caballero