CABALLERO, FERNAN (1796-1877), the pseudonym adopted by the Spanish novelist Cecilia Francisca Josefa Bohl de Faber. Born at Morges in Switzerland, she was the daughter of Johan Nikolas Bohl von Faber, a Hamburg merchant, known to the students of Spanish literature as the editor of the Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas (1821-25), and the Teatro espanol anterior a Lope de Vega (1832). Educated principally at Ham burg, she visited Spain in 1815, married and settled there, and in 1849 became famous as the author of La Gaviota. She had already published in German an anonymous romance, Sola (1840, and curiously enough the original draft of La Gaviota was written in French. This novel was translated into most Euro pean languages, and, though it scarcely seems to deserve the intense enthusiasm which it excited, it is the best of its author's works, with the possible exception of La Familia de Alvareda (which was written, first of all, in German). Less successful at tempts are Lady Virginia and Clemencia; but the short stories entitled Cuadros de Costumbres (1862) are interesting in matter and form, and Una en otra and Elia ó la Espana treinta anos ha are excellent specimens of picturesque narration. It would be difficult to maintain that Fernan Caballero was a great literary artist, but it is certain that she was a born teller of stories and that she has a graceful style very suitable to her purpose. She came into Spain at a most happy moment, before the new order had perceptibly disturbed the old, and she brought to bear not alone a fine natural gift of observation, but a freshness of vision, undulled by long familiarity. She combined the advantages of being both a foreigner and a native. In later publications she in sisted too emphatically upon the moral lesson, and lost much of her primitive simplicity and charm ; but though she occasionally idealized circumstances, she was conscientious in choosing for her themes subjects which had occurred in her own experience. Hence she may be regarded as a pioneer in the realistic field, and this historical fact adds to her positive importance.
See M. A. Morel-Fatio, Etudes sur l'Espagne (z9o4), iii., pp. 279 (J.F.-K.)