Telesforo Trueba y Cosío (Santander 1799 – Paris 1835), Spanish writer, playwright and intellectual, spent most of his life in England, first as school pupil and then, after the restoration of Ferdinand VII, in exile. Unlike many of the Spaniards who took refuge in England, Trueba’s exile was self-imposed, inspired by his liberal ideology and his inability to accept the despotism of the Spanish king.

On various occasions, Trueba y Cosío expressed admiration for the novels of Sir Walter Scott, which served as models for two of his works, Gómez Arias or the Moors of Las Alpujarras (1828, dedicated to Lord Holland) and The Castilian (1829), as well as the collection of historical narratives Romance of History: Spain (1830).

Through his novels, Trueba y Cosío attempted to give British readers a sense of Spanish politics and culture. Along with Valentín de Llanos, he was one of the first authors to write Romantic historical novels set in Spain; but as he wrote in English and for a British audience, his works had little influence on the Spanish historical novel of the period. Many critics have entirely excluded them; a notable exception being Menéndez Pelayo, who considered Trueba “the father of the historical novel” in Spain. In recent years, this view has gained ground.

Trueba y Cosío’s liberal and anticlerical cosmopolitanism is reflected in his novels and their depiction of British, French and Spanish society. He expresses admiration for Britain’s political organization and a certain distaste for the French, whom he finds frivolous and at times insolent. Spain appears in his novels as a beautiful and romantic country, rich in history, but at the same time morally backward, misguided by its rulers and the Catholic Church.

In addition to historical novels, Trueba wrote a vie romancée, Life of Hernán Cortés (1826), and a narrative history of The Conquest of Peru (1830), as well as several novels on contemporary manners: The Incognito or Sins and Peccadilloes (1831), Paris and London (1832) and Salvador the Guerrilla (1834).