Félix María Serafín Sánchez de Samaniego y Zabala (12 October 1745 – 11 August 1801) was a Spanish neoclassical

fabulist Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral ...

Life

He was born and died in Laguardia, Álava, in the Basque Country, and was educated at

Valladolid Valladolid () is a municipality in Spain and the primary seat of government and de facto capital of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. It has a population around 300,000 peop ...

. A government appointment was secured for him by his uncle the Count de Peñaflorida. His ''Fábulas'' (1781–1784), one hundred and fifty-seven in number, were originally written for the boys educated in the school founded by the Biscayan Society. In the first installment of his fables he admitted that he had taken Tomás Iriarte for his model, a statement which proves that he had read Iriarte's fables in manuscript; he appears, however, to have resented their publication in 1782, and this led to a rancorous controversy between the former friends. Samaniego, however, was highly original in the matters of quiet humour and careless grace, and his popularity kept on growing.

References

External links

The Spanish text of his nine books of fables online
Spanish poets 1745 births 1801 deaths Fabulists {{Spain-writer-stub