biography
| name: |
Nifo or Nipho, Francisco Mariano
|
pronunciation:
[neefoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1719-1803)
|
| biography:
| Journalist, born in Alcañiz, E Spain, the first professional journalist in Spain. He founded fifteen newspapers and periodicals, among them the first Diario (1758), El Correo General, La Estafeta de Londres, and many other journals translating foreign news for a Spanish audience; his shrewd knowledge of public taste quickly made him wealthy. Interested in the drama, he courageously defended Calderón and the autos sacramentales of the Golden Age against the neoclassical theorists of the time. The Colección de los mejores papeles poéticos y composiciones dramáticas de Don Francisco Mariano Nipho (2 vols, 1805) induced Menéndez y Pelayo to call Nifo a ‘poeta detestable’, but Nifo was well inured to insults. His use of earlier writers for publishable material was instrumental in preserving some important ballads, entremeses, and biographical data on Spanish literature that would otherwise have been lost. His treasury is the 7-volume Caxón de sastre literato... (1760-1; 2nd edn., enlarged and corected in 6 vols, 1781–2). |
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