The glad lady by Amy Ella Blanchard
"The glad lady" by Amy Ella Blanchard is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set in northern Spain, it follows spirited American Patience “Patty” Blake, her sister Doña Martina, and their Spanish family and friends as they spend a summer in Asturias. Through fiestas, village customs, seaside rambles, and visits to ancient houses, the tale mixes travel color, gentle romance, and cross‑cultural comedy—especially around Patty’s flirtatious banter with Don Tomás
and a homesick American engineer, Robert Lisle. It promises a warm, picturesque story of manners, friendship, and light-hearted intrigue rather than high drama. At the start of the story, a small party gathers in San Sebastián: Dr. Juan Estradas and his American wife Martina, his brother Tomás, and Martina’s sister Patty with her schoolmate Paulette. Patty’s teasing charm and halting Spanish lead Tomás to dub her “the glad lady,” and the group moves on to a mountain town, where a clean but primitive inn, the lively plaza, and village routines set the scene. They visit a peasant weaver and a venerable old house, stroll to a cave-fringed beach, and lunch in style at Don Felipe’s antiquity-filled palacio, leaving with souvenir cups and later bouquets. A reserved traveler reappears as Robert Lisle, an American with Kentucky roots, who bonds with Patty over homesickness. The party then settles into the Estrada family home, and St. John’s Eve and Day bring local traditions: decking streams and the fountain with flowers, villagers bringing gifts—including a lamb from Perdita—and preparations for music and dancing as the community arrives singing a song in honor of Don Juan. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.html.images | 428 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.epub3.images | 2.0 MB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.epub.images | 2.0 MB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.epub.noimages | 329 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.kf8.images | 2.6 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.kindle.images | 2.6 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76495.txt.utf-8 | 383 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76495/pg76495-h.zip | 3.0 MB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
About this eBook
| Author | Blanchard, Amy Ella, 1856-1926 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Bridgman, L. J. (Lewis Jesse), 1857-1931 |
| LoC No. | 10014648 |
| Title | The glad lady |
| Original Publication | Boston: Dana Estes & Company, 1910. |
| Credits | Carol Brown, Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 81.9 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Man-woman relationships -- Fiction |
| Subject | Americans -- Spain -- Fiction |
| Subject | Spain -- Social life and customs -- Fiction |
| Subject | Vacations -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76495 |
| Release Date | Jul 13, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 206 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |