The Reading Warehouse

Caterina Albert i Parad s (1869-1966) began her career with a scandal. Her dramatic monologue "The Infanticide," delivered by a young woman, won prizes and garnered the attention of the Catalan literary world, but its harsh theme drew outrage when the anonymous author was revealed to be a woman. In the tradition of George Eliot, George Sand, and other controversial women authors, Albert had assumed a man's name, V ctor Catal . She continued to write unflinching narratives, mostly in Catalan, of the people and life around her, producing a body of work still enlisted today to help the Catalan language resist the dominance of Peninsular Spanish.

Born in 1869 to a wealthy family in L�Escala, Spain, Caterina Albert i Parad�s lived almost one hundred years, and took part in most of the literary movements of her day. Major political events during her lifetime include an end to most Spanish colonial possessions in 1898; labor unrest resulting from the strengthening of the industrial revolution and war protests in the first decade of the twentieth century; and the Second Republic followed by the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. A writer of great range in themes, styles, tones, and literary techniques, she published poetry, essays, short stories, and two novels under the pseudonym of V�ctor Catal�.

Kathleen McNerney is professor emerita of Spanish at West Virginia University. Her publications include Latin American, Castilian, and French literature, but most focus on Catalan women writers. Co-editor of Double Minorities of Spain (MLA, 1994), she has also edited collections of articles on Merc� Rodoreda and translated stories, poetry, and four novels.