Calderón de la Barca, Fanny (1804–1882)
Calderón de la Barca, Fanny (1804–1882)
Fanny Calderón de la Barca (b. 23 December 1804; d. 6 February 1882), writer and educator. Born Frances Inglis in Edinburgh she, with her family, immigrated to the United States in 1831, after her father's bankruptcy and death. Her mother established schools in Boston and then Staten Island, where in 1838 Frances married Spain's minister to the United States, Ángel Calderón de la Barca. From 1839 to 1842, as wife of Spain's first ambassador to Mexico, she wrote journals and letters from which she gathered the two-volume Life in Mexico (1843), a richly detailed portrait of postindependence society. Particularly noteworthy are her observations on politics and daily life in the national capital and surrounding central valley, and in the neighboring regions of Michoacán, Morelos, and Puebla. Upon her husband's death in 1861, she became governess and companion to the Spanish royal family. In 1876, she was accorded the title of marquesa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charles Dumas, L'Europe et les Européens au Mexique vers 1840: Selon l'oeuvre de Mme. Calderón de la Barca (1962).
Howard T. Fisher and Marion Hall Fisher, Life in Mexico: The Letters of Fanny Calderón de la Barca (1966).
Guadalupe Appendini, La vida en México en 1840 (1974).
Stuart F. Voss