7 h 10 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 7 h 10 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the heart wants what family, faith, and reputation forbid?
In Tales of Love, Emilia Pardo Bazán gathers short stories where affection is never far from pride, jealousy, money, habit, or fear. Some tales are tender; others turn bitter. Set against the pressures of Spanish life, they explore the uneasy space between what people feel and what duty asks them to do.
Marriage, family, and church shape private choices in this world. A woman's future can depend on a match arranged for property or standing. Pardo Bazán looks closely at these pressures without making love simple or comfortable. Desire and conscience pull against each other, while class and reputation narrow the room people have to choose.
What you’ll discover
- Love without easy answers Explore feelings tangled with jealousy and pride, where tenderness does not sweep bitterness away.
- The weight of reputation See how family expectations and social standing reach into the most private choices.
- Desire against conscience Enter the struggle between longing for something and believing that longing is wrong.
- Women's uncertain choices Consider a world where marriage can tie a woman's future to property and status.
- A sharp, unsentimental eye Discover short fiction that observes relationships closely, finding both warmth and discomfort in love.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who enjoy quick, vivid stories about passion, jealousy, pride and regret, and anyone who likes to taste many moods in one sitting.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love finds a way inside
- A welcome guest can take charge
- An image can mislead the heart
- Hidden faces give desire room
- Desire follows memory and curiosity
- Pride and fear can poison love
- Respectability can become a woman's burden
- Irony and pity share a voice
- Love keeps returning as a question
Who’s who
- EveA woman who tries to rid herself of Love by travel, towers and finally a cunning trap of tenderness.
- MartaA kind young woman who opens her door to a stranger on a stormy night and cannot make him leave.
- Trifón LiliosaA hunchbacked piano teacher, scorned all his life, who wants to take revenge by winning the love of a pupil.
- LauraA proud, poor lacemaker who sells her long golden hair to feed her sick mother and must go out into the world.
- ElisaA wife who spends her whole married life trying to atone for running away with her future husband.
- Afra ReyesA pale, strong-willed woman of Marineda, admired and whispered about after a day at sea with her friend.
- Pablo RoldánA husband who believes a wife is free to stop loving him, so long as she keeps up appearances.
- MartinaA happy, much-admired girl of Marineda who longs for the perfect love and is ready to marry a captain.
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- Large print hardcover
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Tales of Love in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Tales of Love
by Emilia Pardo Bazán · 1898
A woman builds towers, bars and moats to keep out a small boy named Love, and he keeps getting in.
Challenging2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“No argument is more pointless than one about beauty.”
In short
Can you lock love out of your house? In the first tale of this book, a woman named Eve tries everything.
Tales of Love at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 30 min3 h 35 min fast, 5 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 64,400 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1898by Emilia Pardo Bazán
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Love is a guest who cannot be shut out
The book opens with Love Murdered, a fable of a few pages. Eve is pursued by a little rascal called Love, who rides on her carriage and hides in her handbag. Distance fails, so she raises a tower with moats, guards and iron doors. One moonlit evening she leans out of the window, and Love slips inside.
She blocks the cracks and the keyhole, and he dissolves into the air she breathes. So she baits her nets with flowers and sweet smiles, and Love flies to her like a trusting child. She rocks him to sleep and prepares to end him, but a pang of pity stops her hand.
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- 15-minute summary
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Details
- First published
- 1898
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 35 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Pardo Bazán, Emilia. Tales of Love. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love.
Pardo Bazán, E. (2026). Tales of love. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love (Original work published 1898)
Pardo Bazán, Emilia. Tales of Love. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love.
@book{pardobazan2026tales,
author = {Pardo Bazán, Emilia},
title = {Tales of Love},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love},
note = {First published 1898}
}
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What is Tales of Love by Emilia Pardo Bazán about?
It is a collection of short stories about love in many forms, including passion, jealousy, pride, regret and revenge. The tales range from short fables to longer scenes of Spanish society, and each one looks at a different side of the heart.
Are the stories in Tales of Love true?
Some are invented, and some are based on real events. In her preface the author says that three stories borrow ideas from others and five or six come from real incidents, which she adapted to protect people's privacy.
Who is Marineda in these stories?
Marineda is a fictional provincial city on the northern coast of Spain, with a promenade, a theater and a seawall. The author uses it as the setting for many tales, such as Afra, Martina and The Faithful Fiancée.
The author
Emilia Pardo Bazán
1851–1921 · Spanish novelist and essayist
Emilia Pardo Bazán was a Spanish novelist, short-story writer and editor. She was born in A Coruña in 1851 and died in Madrid in 1921. She wrote The House of Ulloa, published in 1886, and Mother Nature, published in 1887. She lived in Galicia and Madrid.
“No argument is more pointless than one about beauty.”
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