The works of British women authors in Franco’s Spain. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Anne Brontë

Abstract

This article analyzes how the work of six nineteenth century British women authors, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Anne Brontë was received upon its translation into Spanish and publication in Spain during the Franco dictatorship. Specifically, this study focuses on the 10 novels by these writers that were able to make it through the strict administrative censorship regime that was in place in Spain and were published for the first time in the country between 1939 and 1975. These titles were Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma by Jane Austen; The Professor, Shirley and Villette by Charlotte Brontë; Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë; Janet’s Repentance by George Eliot, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The approach used to shed light on what motivated the regime’s censors to allow the

publication of these Protestant women authors consisted of an examination of all the censorship files on the above-mentioned books (49 files) as well as a consideration of the assessments of the works issued by the Franco-era ‘moral catalogues’. Additionally, a comparative analysis of the translations and the original was carried out to determine whether significant changes were made to the books during the process of translation. The analysis indicates that the censors were quite permissive concerning these authors and that the authorities expressed few reservations about allowing the novels to be published.