Elia

Real name: Cecilia Francisca Böhl de Faber. (1796 -1877) She was born on December 24, 1796 in Morges, Switzerland, and educated in Germany. Daughter of the Hispanic artist Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber and a lady from Cádiz. She moved to Cádiz in 1813 because of her father's work. In 1816, she married Antonio Planells and Bardaxi, an infantry captain who died in action a year later. In 1822 the young widow married Don Francisco Ruiz del Arco, Marquis of Arco Hermoso, an officer of the Royal Guard. Deceased Arco Hermoso in 1835, the now Marchioness went through painful economic circumstances, until two years later she remarried, this time with Antonio Arrón de Ayala, a considerably younger man. Arrón de Ayala was appointed consul in Australia and embarked on various businesses that brought him considerable fortune until ruinous financial speculation in 1859 pushed him to suicide. As early as 1840 the writer had published an anonymous romance Sole, in German, and in 1849 her novel La Gaviota, originally written in French, was translated into Spanish by José Joaquín de Mora and published as a folletin in El Heraldo. Eugenio de Ochoa, a prominent literary critic, ratified the popular success by saying that the now-named Fernán Caballero was a worthy Spanish rival to Sir Walter Scott. She was for many years one of the most read authors in Spain, and her death in Seville on April 7, 1877 was a cause of popular mourning.