Emília Sureda i Bimet (Palma, 1865 – 1904) was a writer associated with the Mallorca School who moved in cultured, intellectual circles, with friends including Miquel Costa i Llobera, Joan Alcover, Maria Antònia Salvà, and Mateu Obrador.

Her poetry echoes with the island’s traditions, the beauty of its landscapes, and country life. It also shows glimpses of unease with her milieu and feelings of not fitting in, leading her to wish for freedom and a desire to escape from the world, as a result of which she spent prolonged periods in the family properties in Valldemossa and sa Pobla.

In 1899 her poem “La vida pagesa” was awarded a prize in the Jocs Florals literary competition in Barcelona. In 1903 she published poems in Gazeta de Mallorca, Catalunya. Revista Literària Quinzenal, and Ilustració Catalana. In 1904, she received a second award, the “Flor Natural” in the Jocs Florals of Mallorca with her poem “La lluna no és morta”. Most of her poems appeared posthumously in the volume Poesies mallorquines (1905).

 

Web page: Irene Zurrón Servera for AELC.
Cover photograph: Ilustració Catalana, 20 November 1904 (BNE).
Photograph from the biography: reproduced by Mateu Obrador in Poesies mallorquines (1905).
Translation: Julie Wark.