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.

Tristana is a novel where love, hate and power converge into a triangle of domination and frustration.Galdós', following the ideas of the Free Teaching Institution, intervened in the arena of the debate around the emancipation of women and their incorporation into the public sphere. Tristana, a young woman subjected to the rule of the tyrannical Don Lope, idealistically tries to find her purpose on life but she ends trapped by the rules of a world dominated by men who only see her as the object of their desire. Written in an experimental manner that defies the boundaries of theatre, epistolary and novel genres, Galdós' displays the purest nature of his characters by presenting their contradictions, weaknesses and virtues. He uses a deliberately ambiguous style that seeks to address fundamental questions regarding the unbalances of a Madrid in times of turbulence, but leaves the reader to draw their own meaning.