ABSTRACT
A publication from the Spanish-speaking world that has, I believe, signifi cance for Dickens studies is the Spanish translation of Hard Times issued in Madrid in 1921 under the title Tiempos dificiles. It was part of a collection by the Estrella publishing house, which was managed by the Spanish promoter of culture Gregorio Martinez Sierra. The collection included ten other works of world literature, all of them with illustrations by Rafael Perez Barradas (or simply Barradas, as he was known in artistic circles). The originals of some of Barradas’s illustrations for Tiempos dificiles are in the National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay, and were put on exhibition during a recent conference called “Dickens in Latin America,” held June 23-25, 2003. Some of these illustrations seem particularly valuable in helping us to consider the complex interrelationship between the verbal and the graphic in literary texts.1
