This is the first comprehensive study of the theater of nineteenth-century Spain, a country that produced more than 10,000 plays in the course of the century. David Thatcher Gies reevaluates the canon of texts, uncovering dozens of plays and authors previously ignored by critics, and placing them in the social and political context of their times. His book provides a readable overview of the known and unknown elements of Spanish nineteenth-century drama, and stresses the vitality of the theater at that time and the strong reactions it aroused in its audiences.

First Published in 2002. The present volume forms part of a major Bibliography of the Hispanic Theatre, forthcoming in several volumes by different specialists. As such, it is one of the products of a still larger computer-assisted Project of Hispanic Research Bibliographies. The aim has been to give as wide a coverage to the area as possible, listing not only books and articles in periodicals but also data of a documentary character such as items on playbills and the local regulation of theatres. Annotation is confined to information, and critical appraisal is excluded.