Frances Erskine Inglis, 1st Marquise of Calderón de la Barca
| Frances Erskine Inglis | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1804 Edinburgh |
| Died | 1882 Madrid |
| Other names | Marquise of Calderón de la Barca |
| Occupation | Writer |
Frances "Fanny" Erskine Inglis, later the Marquesa of Calderón de la Barca (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1804 – Madrid, Spain, 1882), was a Scottish 19th-century travel writer best known for her 1843 account, Life in Mexico, which is widely regarded by historians as one of the most influential Latin American travel narratives of the 19th century.
Inglis was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1804, the 5th child of her Scottish, upper-middle-class parents,. Her father was a distinguished lawyer and her mother came from a wealthy Scottish family who had profited from distillery. When Inglis’ father’s law firm suffered from bankruptcy, her family moved to Normandy, France, and later to Boston, after his death and her mother’s remarriage in 1831. During this time, Inglis traveled to Italy as a young girl to complete her education.
In Boston, she and her family opened a school for girls, where Inglis worked as a schoolteacher. However, the decline of the school led her family to move to New Brighton, in Staten Island, New York, a place of particular interest to diplomats, such as the Spanish minister to the United States, Ángel Calderón de la Barca, retreating there from Washington, D.C.’s hot summers. Inglis and Ángel met in 1836 through the mutual acquaintance of prominent historian, William Hickling Prescott, who had brought Ángel to New York due to interest in his Spanish source materials. On 24 September 1838, Inglis and Ángel Calderón de la Barca married, and Frances Erskine Inglis became Frances "Fanny" Calderón de la Barca. The couple moved to Mexico in 1839, when Ángel became Spanish minister to Mexico as part of Spain’s attempt to recognize Mexico’s independence. They resided in Mexico for the next two years, during which Fanny Calderón de la Barca wrote the letters that would eventually comprise her 1843 travel book, Life in Mexico.
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