José Zacarías González del Valle

Narrator, poet, professor, literary critic.

He was a student of the San Carlos Seminary. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy (1834), in Jurisprudence (1837) and in Sacred Canons (1838). He received his licentiate in Philosophy in 1838.

That same year the Patriotic Society awarded him a prize for his "Memoir on Education." From 1838 also dates his first novel, Recollections of the Cholera.

In 1839 he received his licentiate in Law and presented himself for the competitive examination for the chair of Aristotelian Text at the University of La Habana. Later he was able to hold it on an interim basis.

In 1842 he traveled to Spain. He received his law degree in Madrid. He visited France.

He obtained the chair of Physics at the University of La Habana in 1847. He collaborated in La Siempreviva, La Flor de Mayo, La Cartera Cubana, Memorias de la Sociedad Patriótica, Gaceta de Puerto Príncipe, Faro Industrial de La Habana, El Álbum, El Plantel, El Prisma, Diario de La Habana, El Artista, Noticioso y Lucero.

In the pages of the Diario de La Habana (Oct., 1839) he sustained his famous polemic with José de la Luz y Caballero regarding eclecticism. He was part of the circle of intellectuals that gathered around Del Monte.

He occasionally cultivated literary criticism. At the end of his life, already ill with tuberculosis, he moved to Spain and was appointed secretary to His Majesty. He used the pseudonyms El ecléctico, Otro, and Tulio.