The Cuban writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (1814–1873) pioneered not only Latin American but also Spanish women's writing in the mid-nineteenth century. She is considered ‘la figura más destacada de todo el romanticismo en Hispanoamérica [que] no ha tenido rival en la literatura del nuevo continente’ (Díez-Echarri and Roca Franquesa, 1966: 893) [the most outstanding figure to emerge from Spanish American Romanticism, who has had no equal in the literature of the New Continent]. She was born and educated into Cuba's aristocracy in Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey). In 1836, Avellaneda moved with her family to La Coruña, Spain, her late father's home city, and in 1840, she settled in Madrid, here discovering a vibrant literary life and beginning her creative and most prolific years. In 1846, she married Pedro Sabater, who was highly positioned in politics, but shortly afterwards, he died of cancer. Her second marriage, in 1855, was to Domingo Verdugo y Massieu, a Spanish colonel. They went to Cuba in 1860, where he had been assigned a political post. Following Verdugo's death in 1863, the Cuban author returned to Spain where she stayed until the end of her days in 1873.