Rich and Poor offers a full exploration of Galdós's treatment of questions relating to the creation and distribution of wealth in the modern money-centred society of Restoration Spain. To this day no other critical work on Galdós has analysed the financial and economic aspects of Galdós's mature novels in the depth they deserve. Rich and Poor shows that these aspects are essential, not only to the novels' narrative, but also to Galdós's understanding of Spanish society in the final years of the nineteenth century, and it reveals his perception that he was living through a time of unforeseeable social transformation. Rich and Poor brings recent scholarship on nineteenth-century Spanish history together with a wealth of contemporary material - journalism, essays, pamphlets and costumbrista sketches of manner. In this way Galdós's novels are shown to participate in the varied currents of critical thought - both conservative and socially radical - which questioned the theoretical basis of the Spanish liberal system from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Anyone who wondered how relevant Galdós's work is to us today should read this book, since we, like him, live in a time marked by a general perception of social and economic uncertainty.