Emilio Rabasa (1856-1930), lawyer, historian, literary critic, essayist and novelist, besides being a journalist and active participant in politics, stands out among the Mexican intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Considered to have introduced realism into Mexican fiction, Rabasa's writing reveals the influence of Perez Galdos as well as earlier Mexican writers, ranging from Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's El periquillo sarniento (1816) to Jose Tomas de Cuellar's Baile y cochino (1886). A perceptive literary critic, journalist and well-informed historian, he was one...

Myth and legend have existed in Mexico in prehispanic times as a means to transmit cosmogonical or ethological visions. During the colonial period short stories appear intertwined in the many chronicles, histories and writings of the conquistadores, priests and other men of letters. With the Diario de Mexico (1805), the short story starts its long association with journalism, and appears along novels such as Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's. Literary magazines also were a fertile environment, but it was in 1870, when Jose Maria Roa Barcena published "Noche al raso," an integrated...