Welcome to the AHRC-funded project on ‘Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1960s)’ at the University of Exeter. As the Principal Investigator, my interest in this area of research has developed over several years, starting with representations of pathology in the works of turn-of-the-century Spanish author Pío Baroja. He studied medicine in Madrid and Valencia, submitting a doctoral thesis on ‘Pain. A Psychophysical Study’ in 1893, and practised for a short time as a doctor in the Basque town of Cestona before turning definitively to writing. His disillusionment with studying medicine is reflected in a famous semi-autobiographical novel, El árbol de la ciencia (1911) [The Tree of Knowledge].