These were pungent essays, remarkable for independent judgment and refined humour, and found so much favor with the public that the young beginner was soon appointed editor of the Revista.

In Marta y Maria (1883), a portrayal of the struggle between religious vocation and earthly passion, somewhat in the manner of Valera, Palacio Valdés achieved a popular triumph.

[1] According to a contemporaneous assessment by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: El Idilio de un enfermo (1884), a most interesting fragment of autobiography, has scarcely met with the recognition which it deserves: perhaps because the pathos of the story is too unadorned.

Subsequently Palacio Valdés returned to his earlier and better manner in Los Majos de Cádiz (1896) and in La Alegría del Capitán Ribot (1899).

In any case he takes a prominent place in modern Spanish literature as a keen analyst of emotion and a sympathetic, delicate, humorous observer.