Novel
La hija del Adelantado
Not translated into English
José Milla y Vidaurre · 1866
Synopsis
On 15 September 1539, Pedro de Alvarado, the Adelantado, returns in triumph to the valley of Almolonga with his second wife, Beatriz de la Cueva, and his daughter Leonor, born of a Tlaxcalan princess. Promised to don Francisco de la Cueva, her stepmother's brother, the young mestiza loves only the soldier Pedro de Portocarrero, her father's faithful friend. Agustina, a jealous former mistress of Portocarrero, the secretary don Diego and conspirators hostile to the governor mingle their intrigues with this thwarted love, under the eye of a disquieting herbalist.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in La Semana, from 8 April to 17 June 1866, in eleven instalments, then the same year in volume at the Imprenta de la Paz, under the pseudonym Salomé Jil: the two printings do not carry the same text, and the preparation of a critical edition still keeps scholars busy. The author, then a journalist and senior civil servant, set the action between 1539 and 1541, around the return of Pedro de Alvarado.
Who it is for
In Spanish. The story assumes familiarity with the names of the conquest and the protocol of a colonial court; the descriptions of customs take up as much space as the plot.
Prizes and reception
Literary histories make it the first historical novel of Guatemala and of the isthmus. Rubén Darío recommended it in 1887 before the other books of its author.