A Woman of Seville (18 page)

The quotation on page vi is taken from Marcelin Defourneaux,
Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age
, translated by Newton Branch (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1970) p 225.

Joaquin Hazanus y La Rua,
Vazquez de Leca, 1573-1649
(Seville: Sevilla Imprenta y Libreria de Sobrinos de Izquierdo, 1918) pp 254-6. (NB We know that some of the Seville orders were bringing up Morisco children who were left behind when their families went to Africa. Spanish documents cited in the above Seville publication, confirm that the children were distributed into the care of clergy and pious laymen.)

Mary Elizabeth Perry,
Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

Ruth Pike,
Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century
(Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1972) p 377. (NB Historical records indicate that in Seville three hundred children under seven were left behind by their families at the time of the great exodus which began in Seville in 1610.)

Velázquez in Seville
, edited by David Davies and Enriqueta Harris (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1996). (NB The tower scene in the opening chapter of my novel was inspired by a historically documented incident. According to Vicente Canal, the inquisition notary Daza y Valdes took a group of male friends up the Giralda tower to test the range of a visorio (telescope). Daza, a close friend of Francisco Pacheco’s, was familiar with Galileo’s works. In 1613 Daza published
The Art and Use of Telescopes
, a text in which, according to Vicente Canal, Daza recounts the ascent of the Giralda episode. See Vicente Lleo Canal, ‘The Cultural Elite of Velázquez’s Seville’, in
Velázquez in Seville
referenced above, pp 26-27.)

Thanks to those who have offered support, encouragement and editorial advice on the novel over the seven years that it has been in the making.

Professor Jane Arnold of Seville University was endlessly helpful when I visited Spain in 2003 to research the novel. More recently she has read the manuscript and assisted with the Spanish language and other textual matters. Thanks to Jenny Lee, Clara Tuite, Gail Jones, Wendy Faris and Virginia Maxwell for appraising the manuscript in its early stages. A big thank you to London literary agent Laura Morris for her time, enthusiasm and useful editorial advice.

A special thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, in particular Linda Funnell for her patience and for her thorough and astute editing. Thanks to freelancer Belinda Lee for her thoughtful copyedit, and also to Jo Butler.

Finally to my family, who, though reluctant readers of my writing, when badgered by me have helped out by reading little samples. I could not have done without your presence and your continued belief in me and in the value of writing.

Sallie Muirden is a poet and novelist. Her first novel,
Revelations of a Spanish Infanta
, won the 1996 HarperCollins Fiction Prize. Her second novel,
We Too Shall Be Mothers
, was published in 2001. Her collection of poetry,
The Fable of Arachne
, was published in 2009. Sallie lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children.

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Revelations of a Spanish Infanta

We Too Shall Be Mothers

The Fable of Arachne