José Cadalso

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José de Cadalso y Vázquez (1741-1782), Spanish author, was born at Cádiz on the 8th of October 1741.

Before completing his twentieth year he had travelled through Italy, Germany, England, France and Portugal, and had studied the literatures of these countries. On his return to Spain he entered the army and rose to the rank of colonel. He was killed at the Great Siege of Gibraltar, on the 27th of February 1782.

His first published work was a rhymed tragedy, Don Sancho Garcia, Conde de Castilla (1771). In the following year he published his Los Eruditos a la Violeta, a prose satire on superficial knowledge, which was very successful. In 1773 appeared a volume of miscellaneous poems, Ocios de mi juventud, and after his death there was found among his manuscripts a series of fictitious letters in the style of the Lettres Persanes; these were issued in 1793 under the title of Cartas marruecas. Cartas Marruecas y Noches lúgubres are considered his best works. Noches lúgubres (“Sombre Nights”), an autobiographical prose work, was published from 1789 to 1790 in the journal El correo de Madrid and its central theme is the night. This work is considered an antecedent of Romanticism in Spain. A good edition of his works appeared at Madrid, in 3 vols., 1823. This is supplemented by the Obras inéditas (Paris, 1894) published by R. Foulch-Delbosc.