Caterina Albert i Paradís predates Federico García Lorca and D. H. Lawrence in her portrayal of women's sexual passions. She was an unsung pioneer of modernist literature at the beginning of the twentieth century, writing in the ancient Catalan language of Spain. Published under the nationalist (and necessarily male) pseudonym of Víctor Català, Solitude is regarded as the most important Catalan novel to appear before the Spanish Civil War.