Elisabeth Mulder

Elisabeth Mulder Pierluisi (married name, Elizabeth Mulder de Dauner; 9 February 1904 – 28 November 1987) was a Spanish writer, poet, translator, journalist and literary critic.

Early life Elisabeth Mulder Pierluisi was born on 9 February 1904 in Barcelona. She was the daughter of Enrique Mulder García, (Marquis of Tedema Toelosdorp of the Netherlands) a doctor and son of Dutch Spanish parents, and Zoraida Pierluisi Grau, a Puerto Rican of Italian and Catalan descent. She inherited the title of Marquise of Tedema Toelosdorp from her father, although she never used the title.

She spent part of her childhood in her mother's native Puerto Rico before moving to Barcelona at the age of seven, where she would live for most of her life.

She published her first collection of poems Embrujamiento in 1927 and her first novel, Una sombra entre los dos in 1934 followed by La historia de Java (1935), a delicately lyrical account of the story of a cat, independent and wandering, called Java because "she walked with the thrilling elegance, at once decadent and ritual, of a Batavian dancer". This work received positive reviews from Manuel Azaña and Juan José Domenchina. She also developed children's literature and theatre (Casa Fontana and Romance de media noche) in collaboration with María Luz Morales. Before the Spanish Civil War she published in newspapers Mundo Gráfico and El Hogar y la Moda in Madrid; Las Provincias in Valencia, and La Noche in Barcelona. She also worked as a translator, mainly poetry, although her translations of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, and Baudelaire and Pushkin poems date from this period. This was followed by a period of collaboration with short stories in the press in Brisas y Lecturas (1930 to 1935) with some thirty stories. During the war she suffers a serious case of nephritis that kept her in bed for a year, during which she wrotes Prelude to Death, a novel that was eventually published in 1941 and which had issues with the censors due to the suicide of the main character. It was adapted for cinema under the title Verónica.

Mulder also wrote two children's fiction books, Los cuentos del viejo reloj (1941), and Las noches del gato verde (1963). In 1976 she translated the children's book La lente mágica (The Magic Lens) by Swedish photographer and children's writer Astrid Bergman Sucksdorff.Mulder continued to alternate mix writing fiction with journalism, contributing to La Vanguardia Española, Destino and Solidaridad Nacional of Barcelona, ABC of Madrid and Índice Literario of Caracas, among others, and in 1954-1955 she was in charge of the "Letras inglesas" section of Ínsula of Madrid.

The Venezuelan magazine La Lírica Hispana dedicated an issue to her in 1962.

In 2023 Amarillo Editora published a new revised edition of her novel Alba Grey.

Personal life In 1921 Mulder married the Catalan lawyer and politician Ezequiel Dauner Foix, almost thirty years her senior, with whom she had a son, Enrique Dauner Mulder. Her husband died in 1930.

The poet, journalist, and athlete, Ana María Martínez Sagi, considered Mulder to be her great love. They had met at one of the many conferences Martínez Sagi gave throughout Spain in the early 1930s to vindicate the role of women in society. In 1931 they holidayed together in Mallorca and as a result their families separated them.

Mulder died in Barcelona in 1987.

Selected works