Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is considered the greatest Spanish writer after Cervantes. In a career that spanned more than forty years, Galdós wrote nearly eighty novels and some twenty plays. Tristana, also available as an NYRB Classic, and other books of his were adapted for the screen by the great surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, including Javier Marías, José Saramago, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and César Vallejo. Her translations have won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, among others. in 2014, she was awarded an OBE for services to literature and, in 2018, the Ordem do Infante D. Henrique from the Portuguese government and a Lifetime Award for Excellence in Translation from the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, New York.