Ramón de Mesonero Romanos (Madrid 1803 – Madrid 1882), celebrated writer on manners and a great connoisseur of ancient and modern Madrid, engaged with his city life in historical and topographical works and in urban improvement projects, earning him a reputation as a “promoter of progress” and the post of Chronicler of the City of Madrid.

Born into a prosperous middle-class family, Mesonero received a basic education along neoclassical lines and amassed considerable erudition from private study and extensive reading. His sensitivity and literary tastes are reflected in his substantial private library, which included classic Spanish literature and modern European authors. In 1876, his collection of books about Madrid was made a core holding of Madrid’s Municipal Library, which conferred on him the honorific title of Lifetime Director.

In his youth, Mesonero looked after his father’s business. As a volunteer in the Constitutional Government’s National Militia in 1822 he took part in the march from Madrid to Cádiz. Later, Mesonero aligned himself with moderate Liberalism and stayed aloof from party politics. His prose writings form part of the literature of manners (costumbrismo), a modern form depicting the traditions of civil society; he took up a position that was consistently opposed to that of his fellow-costumbrista Mariano José de Larra. Mesonero moved with ease between the spheres of politics and cultural/intellectual life, aided by his social position, the staunch conservatism that he developed after his early years, and his robust self-positioning within Spanish cultural nationalism.

Mesonero was a regular participant in the major literary gatherings that drew young writers to the home of the diplomat José Gómez de la Cortina in 1827-28, or the famous tertulia known as El Parnasillo, at the Café del Príncipe – gatherings which laid the basis for what later would crystallize into the Ateneo Científico y Literario de Madrid (1835) and the Liceo Artístico y Literario (1837). Elected honorary member of the Real Academia Española in 1838 (his admission speech was on the novel), he became a full member in 1847; he was also a founding member of the Ateneo, a prominent observatory disseminating European literary thought, as well as director of its library (1837-40); he was director of the Sociedad para Mejorar la Educación del Pueblo (1838); he was the librarian of the Liceo (1837) and a supernumerary librarian of the Biblioteca Nacional (1845). He held several posts in the political arena: he sat on Madrid’s city council from 1846 to 1849, and again in 1875; was spokesman, chairman, and vice-chairman of various Provincial Boards (Public Education, City Police, Statistics, Health, Charity and, Theatres). In addition to all these political and cultural functions he was appointed Chronicler of Madrid for life in 1864 and received the Grand Cross of the Order of Queen Isabel the Catholic in 1871.

In his capacity as a public man, he promoted the installation of commemorative plaques on the buildings where Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca died, and on Cervantes’s home; in 1868 he prevented the demolition of the Trinitarian convent and church where the remains of the author of Don Quixote were thought to lie.

Mesonero’s made his literary debut with anonymous journalism during the 1820s. Between 1825 and 1828 he produced classicist re-workings of Golden Age comedies (by Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, and Hurtado de Mendoza), and in 1829 he translated E.J.E. Mazères’s comedy Le jeune mari. In the 1830s he wrote articles on manners for the magazine Cartas españolas, under the spectatorial pen name El Curioso Parlante. At this time he undertook a description of “physical” or material Madrid, and a portrait of “moral” Madrid, described and dissected in his writings on manners.

Mesonero’s many writings on city life and local history, evincing his love for the streetscapes of Madrid, began with the oft-reprinted Manual de Madrid (1831), a “modern” urban guide covering history, statistics, and literature. The appendix to the second edition (1835) included a Rápida ojeada sobre el estado de la capital y los medios de mejorarla (“Quick glance at the state of the capital and ways to improve it”). This, his articles in the press (Semanario pintoresco español, La ilustración), and the Proyecto de mejoras generales de Madrid (1846) inspired some restructuring of Madrid’s streets. Mesonero’s ideas on city planning had been honed by his European travels of 1833-34 and 1840-41 (Recuerdos de viaje por Francia y Bélgica en 1840 y 1841, 1841).

More historically oriented was El antiguo Madrid: Paseos histórico-anecdóticos por las calles y casas de esta villa (1861). Mesonero’s moral/social interest in Madrid’s city environment was initially expressed in Panorama matritense: Cuadros de costumbres de la capital, observados y descritos por un “Curioso Parlante” (3 vols, 1835-38). This work brought together articles written for various magazines, more of which were also collected in Escenas matritenses, which went through various iterations and editions between 1842 and 1851. Later costumbrismo essays were collected in Tipos, grupos y bocetos de cuadros de costumbres (1862).

Meanwhile, Mesonero edited newspapers such as the Diario de Madrid, of which he became manager in 1835, and the Semanario pintoresco español, which he managed from 1836 to 1842 – the first illustrated literary review of cultural journalism in Spain, inspired by the Magasin pittoresque, the Musée des familles, and Charles Knight’s Penny magazine. For the Diario he wrote articles on literary criticism and public affairs.

His vindication of Spanish classical theatre was now conducted in a literary-historical frame. Much of this was published in the prestigious Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (BAE), for which he edited the comedies of a large number of minor Golden Age dramatists (Dramáticos contemporáneos a Lope de Vega, 2 vols, 1857-58; Dramáticos posteriores a Lope de Vega, 2 vols, 1858-59), as well as comedies by Rojas Zorrilla (Comedias escogidas de don Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, 1861).

Latterly, Mesonero devoted himself more to compiling his earlier writings. His collected humorous and satirical prose appeared as Obras jocosas y satíricas del “Curioso Parlante” (4 vols, 1862); later collections followed between 1878 and 1881, the year before his death.