Josep Maria Folch i Torres Biography

Josep Maria Folch i Torres

(Barcelona, 1880- id ., 1950) Spanish novelist, comedy writer and journalist in Catalan.He directed the magazine L'Atlàntida , the weekly La Tralla and the weekly children's publication En Patufet .The Catalanist stances and the moralizing intention mark all his work, in which the novels White Souls (1904) and Una vida (1910), and the theatrical works The shepherds (1919) and Cinderella (1920).

He began his literary career as a journalist; Still very young, he directed L'Atlàntida , a magazine founded by a group of friends of Jacint Verdaguer.He was also director of La Tralla , a controversial weekly that gained popularity for its brave Catalan campaigns.From 1905 to 1908 he was in France, where he took refuge after being persecuted for alleged printing crimes.In 1905 he won first prize in a contest organized by El Poble Català with his novel Aigua avall , in which he revealed himself as a nervous narrator.With the politicians Martí i Julià and Folguera i Duran, he worked in the secretariat of the Unió Catalanista; he also helped Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives in the tasks of the Orfeó Català.He collaborated in La Veu de Catalunya and in the satirical weekly Cucut .

In 1909 Josep Maria Folch i Torres found his true calling when he was in charge of the direction of the children's magazine En Patufet , of which he was to be the inspiration and main editor until he left to be published at the end of the civil war (1939).Attached to the popular weekly, Folch i Torres published a collection of novels for youth that in a short time conquered thousands of readers.The first titles were naive adventures more humorous than sentimental, such as En Bolavá detectiu (1911) or Per las terres roges (1912), but very soon our author drifted towards the novel pink, always with a moralizing background and a marked Catalan in the types and environments.

For years and years, Josep Maria Folch i Torres published a monthly novel in his library, which was eagerly awaited and read by an audience of schoolboys, teenagers of both sexes, housewives and not a few young people and mature men.At the same time, he published every week in En Patufet a short narrative under the generic title of Pàgines viscudes ( Pages lived ), in which it was even more clear the educational and moralizing purpose pursued by the author.

Later he began his theatrical work; Along with happy staging of popular children's stories ( La Ventafocs and especially Els pastorets , repeatedly performed in Catalonia on Christmas dates until the present), Folch i Torres produced comedies by tone and intention analogous to those of his novels.Its copious and continuous production had undoubted influence, particularly in the first third of the 20th century: the exaltation of virtues such as generosity, kindness, self-denial and Christian heroism contributed to form, within a moral and civic rectitude, several generations of young Catalans.

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