Since the 1950s the name of Carmen Conde has been familiar in Spain to every well-educated person. Her election, however, as a member of the Spanish Royal Academy in 1978--two years before the French Academy also elected its first woman, Marguerite Yourcenar--places her in the correct, solid position among Spanish writers, and, more specifically, female Spanish poets. With more than a half century of poetic production Conde is unquestionably one of the main influences, after Rosalía de Castro, on current women's poetry in Spain.

To ignore any part of Conde's life would be ignoring also the evolution of her writings. All her work is a direct reflection of her life, the poetic expression of her intense existence: the experience of the civil war in Spain, her personal encounter with Juan Ramón Jiménez, the death of her mother--all mark milestones in her literary...