The fourth volume in the series of studies that Emilia Pardo Bazán had entitled La literatura francesa moderna was to bear the caption of La decadencia. In the three previous volumes the Countess had followed the evolution of the French literary process of the nineteenth century from romanticism to naturalism, and in the last she planned to gather old notes and new ideas into an analysis of end-of-the-century trends. She never brought this project to fruition, but she did leave dispersed among her many other critical writings her ideas and interpretations touching on this phenomenon that she labeled variously “la decadencia” or “el decadentismo.”