Lady Whistledown in Seville: from Countess of Bassanville to Fernán Caballero, pioneers on the society chronicle of nineteenth century

Abstract

Produced by the platform Netflix, the already popular television series The Bridgerton has put up to date the not little relevant  although not sufficiently  valued woman’ s rol as a society chronicler at the dawn of the nineteenth century English press. Beyond the controversy over its disputed historical fidelity (it would be necessary to differentiate here between “historical” and “period” fiction), the truth is that the success of the plot is largely because of it is shown through the epistolary society papers by Lady Whistledow’s, a fictional character who is based, however,  on authentic historical references. This is the case of Mrs. Crackenthorpe, an English columnist from the early eighteenth century specializing  in the echoes of society. She collected them in The Female Tatler. In the middle of the same century Beatriz Cienfuegos appeared in Spain with La Pensadora Gaditana as a moral observer of society and there is a female authorship chronicle of the high society that is more focused on the informational  in the late nineteenth century. In the Sevillian press it presents a practically unexplored field in which we have noticed, however, notorious signatures, such as that of Condesa de Bassanville or that of Fernán Caballero.