Spaces and travels in Carmen de Burgos’ life pathway

Abstract

Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932) symbolized at her time the efforts to support the progress and the modern ideas; the ideas that the Regenerationism trend had encouraged in Spain. From her very arrival to Madrid in 1901 from her Almeria home town, she started a literary and journalistic career punctuated by so many successes. She signed as Colombine, and became the first female editor of a journal (Diario Universal, 1903), and then the first Spanish War correspondent (Heraldo de Madrid, 1909). She accumulated a large and rich culture made of erudition and was an indefatigable and experienced world-traveller from the European limits to the American furthest corners. Both the spaces and the travels have been given a special importance in her narrative work. Her legacy is made of nearly two hundred titles -among these short and long novels, essays, biographies, travel books, literary studies, translations, prologues, books of interviews along with thousands of articles published by the Spanish and the foreign press- it is a largest literary and scholarly work: a polygraph’s work. She was both a minded and an action woman that launched so many press campaigns in favour of social and political causes, especially in favour of women. In our literary story, Carmen de Burgos is the writer who covers the tendencies during the first third of the 20^th century, from the Generation of 98 to the innovative currents, our silver age.