1783–1864

Introduction

Born: Jan­ua­ry 10, 1783, Cá­diz, Spain.

Died: Oc­to­ber 3, 1864, Spain.

portrait

Biography

De Mo­ra in­i­tial­ly stu­died law, and was a pro­fess­or at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gra­na­da.

He lat­er joined the ar­my, but was tak­en pri­son­er, and lived in France 1809–14. It was there he met and mar­ried a high­ly edu­cat­ed French wo­man, Fran­çoise De­lau­neux.

After the war, he re­turned to Cá­diz, im­mers­ing him­self in li­te­ra­ture and trans­lat­ing Wal­ter Scott’s Ivan­hoe.

In ear­ly 1815 he moved to Ma­drid, in­tend­ing to prac­tice law, but the lure of li­te­ra­ture was too strong.

He trans­lat­ed se­ver­al works from French and Eng­lish, and be­came a jour­nal­ist for Crón­i­ca Li­ter­ar­ia y Ci­en­tí­fi­ca, which he found­ed in 1817 and lasted un­til 1820.

Its se­quel, El Con­sti­tu­ci­o­nal, in La Mi­ner­va Na­ci­o­nal and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions, con­tin­ued to ex­plore li­ter­ary and po­li­ti­cal is­sues in prose and verse.

He wrote for and helped di­rect nu­mer­ous li­ber­al news­pa­pers in Ma­drid, earn­ing the nick­name of Lu­ca fa presto for the speed with which he pro­duced ar­ti­cles.

De Mo­ra emi­grat­ed to Lon­don in 1824, set­tling with oth­er li­ber­als in the So­mers­town dis­trict.

With the ed­it­or Ack­er­mann, he found­ed No Me Ol­vi­des, a sort of al­ma­nac in prose and verse, six vol­umes of which were pub­lished 1824–29. The first four had po­ems with trans­la­tions by Mo­ra, and the last two ​by Paul Men­di­bil.

De Mora was the sole di­rect­or and ed­it­or of Un­i­vers­al Mu­se­um of Arts and Sci­en­ces (1824–26) and the Li­ter­ary and Po­li­ti­cal Mail of Lon­don, aimed pri­mar­i­ly at His­pa­nic Am­er­icans.

De Mo­ra went to Bue­nos Ai­res, Ar­gen­tina, in late 1826, and in 1827 led the Crón­i­ca Po­lí­ti­ca y Li­ter­ar­ia y El Con­cil­i­a­dor of his friend Pre­si­dent Ri­va­da­via.

De Mo­ra was in Chi­le 1828–31, where he or­gan­ized the Li­ceo de Chi­le, and found­ed El Mer­cur­io Chi­le­no (1828–29), a sci­en­ti­fic and cul­tur­al jour­nal, in col­la­bo­ra­tion with Span­ish doc­tor Jo­se Pass­a­mán and Ital­i­an bo­ta­nist Car­los Ber­te­ro.

He al­so helped draft Chi­le’s 1828 con­sti­tu­tion.

Sources

Lyrics

Translations

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