Urbina, Luis Gonzaga (1864–1934)

Luis Gonzaga Urbina (b. 8 February 1864; d. 18 November 1934), Mexican journalist and poet. Born in Mexico City, Urbina studied at the National Preparatory School before launching his career as a journalist. He began composing poetry before the age of sixteen. In 1881 he published some of his verses in La patria ilustrada. In 1887 he met his mentor, Justo Sierra Méndez. Thanks to that friendship, Urbina obtained various government positions as well as posts at periodicals, where he wrote theater criticism and some of the first movie reviews in Mexico. Under Sierra's direction and with the cooperation of Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Nicolás Rangel, Urbina compiled the two volumes of Mexican literature, Antología del centenario (1910), produced for the centenary celebrations of that year. Although he is considered a poet of the modernismo movement, Urbina represents the persistence of romanticism with his vespertinas, poems that reflect upon love and melancholy. In 1913 he was appointed director of the National Library, but two years later he left Mexico to live first in Cuba and then in Spain.

See alsoLibraries in Latin America; Literature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Angel Miquel, El nacimiento de una pasion. Luis G. Urbina: Primer cronista mexicano de cine (1991).

Alfonso Rangel Guerra, "Cartas de Luis G. Urbina a Alfonso Reyes," in Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 37, no. 2 (1989).

Gerardo Saenz, Luis G. Urbina: Vida y obra (1961).

Additional Bibliography

Arístides, César. El cisne en la sombra: Antología de poesía modernista. Mexico City: Alfaguarra, 2002.

                                              John Waldron