Leopoldo Alas, better known by the pseudonym “Clarín,” which he adopted in 1875, was born in Zamora, Spain, on April 25, 1852, but his ancestry and cultural preference tie him to the province of Asturias on the northern coast. From 1863 he lived in its capital city of Oviedo, leaving to spend summers at a small farm he inherited in the rural village of Guimarán (also the surname of a major character in La Regenta, or The Judge’s Wife). Alas completed his undergraduate law degree at the University of Oviedo in 1871, then earned a Doctorate in Jurisprudence from the University of Madrid and became a professor in Roman Law at his hometown University of Oviedo in 1882. The position made it possible for him to marry and to begin writing his most important works. To supplement his meager salary as a college professor, Clarín wrote dozens of short stories and scores of newspaper articles, mostly book reviews. In his own day he was less well known for the two novels he also managed to write: La Regenta and His Only Son (Su único hijo, 1891). The former now ranks among the finest realist novels of nineteenth-century Spain.
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