The Enemies of Women (Los Enemigos de la Mujer)

New York, N.Y.: A. L Burt Company, 1920. Reprint Edition. Hardcover. Fair. [10], 547, [5] pages. Includes 12 chapters, and 4 black and white illustrations. Rear board weak and restrengthened with glue. Vicente Blasco Ib��ez (29 January 1867 - 28 January 1928) was a journalist, politician and best-selling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films adapted from his works. In politics he was a militant Republican partisan in his youth and founded the newspaper El Pueblo (translated as The People) in his hometown. The newspaper aroused so much controversy that it was taken to court many times. In 1896, he was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. He made many enemies and was shot and almost killed in one dispute. The bullet was caught in the clasp of his belt. He had several stormy love affairs. He traveled to Argentina in 1909 where two new cities, Nueva Valencia and Cervantes, were created. He gave conferences on historical events and Spanish literature. Tired and disgusted with government failures and inaction, Vicente Blasco Ib��ez moved to Paris at the beginning of World War I. When living in Paris, Ib��ez had been introduced to the poet and writer Robert W. Service by their mutual publisher Fisher Unwin, who asked Robert W. Service to act as an interpreter in the deal of a contract concerning Ib��ez.
He was a supporter of the Allies in World War I. A Russian prince has to flee his country after fighting a duel. He falls in love with a duchess, but becomes jealous when he finds out she has a lover. Extract: The Prince repeated his statement: Man's greatest wisdom consists in getting along without women. He intended to go on but was interrupted. There was a slight stir of the heavy window curtains. Through their parting was seen below, as in a frame, the intense azure of the Mediterranean. A dull roar reached the dining-room. It seemed to come from the side of the house facing the Alps. It was a faint vibration, deadened by the walls, the curtains, and the carpets, distant, like the working of some underground monster; but there rose above the sound of revolving steel and the puffing of steam a clamor of human beings, a sudden burst of shouts and whistling.