Face to Face with the Mexicans

This book will of necessity be compared with that of Mme. Calderón de la Barca, though its date of publication (1887) places it closer in time to Charles Flandreau’s Viva Mexico! Fanny Gooch had little of the literary grace which characterized the letters of Fanny Calderón de la Barca. Mrs. Gooch’s prose is as ordinary as the kitchen stove. But it is a valuable book, nonetheless, for she saw more parts of Mexico and had a broader knowledge of the Mexican people than her earlier counterpart. As Harvey Gardiner writes in his perceptive introduction: “Her abilities and desires combined to produce the finest statement of the social aspects of the early years of the Díaz era.”