Jacinto Benavente (1866-1954), the son of a well-known pediatrician, was born in Madrid. He studied law, but when his father died and left him with a comfortable income, he abandoned his studies and travelled widely in France, England, and Russia.

On his return to Spain he edited, and contributed to, several newspapers and journals. He published a collection of poems (1893) and achieved some fame with Cartas de mujeres (1892-93) [Women's Letters], a series of women's letters, which was followed by another series in 1902. These letters gave Benavente a reputation as a brilliant stylist. His career as a dramatist began in 1892 with a collection of plays under the title «The Fantastic Theatre», but his first successes were El nido ajeno (1894) [Another's Nest] and Gente conocida (1896) [High Society], a satire of Madrid society. Benavente's plays deal with all strata of life; they are both serious and comic, realistic and fantastic, but it is chiefly as a writer of comedies of manners and of one-act farces that he made his name.

His comedies usually take place in Madrid or in Moraleda, an imaginary provincial town in Castile. Whereas in his earlier plays Benavente had been chiefly interested in giving a faithful portrait of society, his later works show an increasing concern for a tight dramatic structure.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967.

Jacinto Benavente died in 1954.