CORONATION, HONORS AND ERASURE LETTERS ON A SPANISH PATRIOT WOMAN BY EMILIA SERRANO, BARONESS OF WILSON, TO ANTONIO MAURA (1909-1918)

Abstract

This study focuses on the contextualized analysis of seven documents that were preserved in the politician Antonio Maura’s Archive during a chronological period of notable importance, since they encompass the period from Barcelona’s Tragic Week (July 26 - August 1909) to the end of World War I (1914-1918). The six letters and a note are concentrate on the final years of the life of the Americanist writer Emilia Serrano, Baroness of Wilson (¿1833?-1923), and they illustrate aspects related to women’s sociopolitical and civic activism and to the construction of the figure of the Patriotic Woman Writer. In the face of processes linked to the pantheonization of some writers in the liberal State, the documentation found in Antonio Maura’s Archive demonstrates the unsuccessful attempts to achieve a similar treatment on the behalf of the writer and a group of promoters of her public image as an Americanist and builder of cultural bridges with the American republics.