1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Trueba, Antonio de

TRUEBA, ANTONIO DE (1819-1889), Spanish novelist, was born on the 24th of December 1819 at Montellano (Biscay), where he was privately educated. In 1835 he was sent to learn business at Madrid; but commerce was not to his taste, and, after a long apprenticeship, he turned to journalism. In 1851 he hit the popular taste with El Cid Campeador and El Libro de los cantares; for the next eleven years he was absorbed by journalistic work, the best of his contributions being issued under the titles of Cuentos popular es (1862), Cuentos de color de rosa (1864), and Cuentos campesinos (1865). The pleasant simplicity and idyllic sentimentalism of these collections delighted an uncritical public, and Trueba met the demand by supplying a series of stories conceived in the same ingenuous vein. In 1862 he was appointed archivist and chronicler of the Biscay provinces; he was deprived of the former post in 1870, but was reinstated after the restoration. He died at Bilbao on the 10th of March 1889.