Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (1814-1873), Cuban author. Avellaneda is known as a leading proponent of Spanish romantic literature (see Spanish Literature: Romanticism). She was born in Camagüey, a Cuban town then known as Puerto Príncipe. After breaking an engagement to marry, Avellaneda moved to Cádiz, Spain, in 1836, where she opened a literary salon and contributed to periodicals under the pseudonym La Peregrina (The Wanderer). In 1840 she moved to Madrid, Spain, soon afterward publishing her first collection of verse, Poesías (1841), which won her the esteem of her contemporaries. In 1846 Avellaneda married the governor of Madrid, Pedro Sabater. He died three months later.

In 1855, at the height of her writing career, with several plays and novels to her name and having won recognition as a popular poet, Avellaneda married Colonel Domingo Verdugo and went with him to Cuba. In Havana she published the successful, yet short-lived, women's magazine Album Cubano de lo Bueno y lo Bello (Cuban Album of the Good and the Beautiful). After her husband's death, Avellaneda returned to Spain, settling again in Madrid.

In addition to her antislavery novel, Sab (1841), and her Biblical play, Baltasar, Avellaneda is most frequently remembered for her love poems, which faithfully mirror the literary taste of her age. Other works include Alfonso Munio (1844), Saul (1849), Flavio Recaredo (1851), all plays; and other novels such as Espatolino (1844) and Guatimozĺn (1847). Her collected works, Obras Completas, were published in 1869-1871.