María de las Mercedes Santa Cruz Montalvo

Considered one of the first female writers of Cuba.

She was born in La Habana. Her parents were Don Joaquín de Santa Cruz y Cárdenas and María Teresa Montalvo y O´Farril, counts of Jaruco. Her childhood takes place in Cuba.

At age 8, she is sent to the Convento de Santa Clara, an institution where she undergoes rigorous education. At twelve years old she moves to Madrid (1802), where her mother then resides. Her mother serves as lady-in-waiting to Queen María Luisa and maintains a salon in the capital frequented by notable politicians, writers, and artists. The young woman personally meets during this period, among others, Moratín, Quintana, and Goya.

Adaptation to European customs, stricter than those of the colony, and the fine education received, which corresponded with her privileged social class, includes serious study of music and singing.

The family, established in Spain, after the father's death seeks the protection of her paternal uncle, General Gonzalo O´Farril y Herrera, who maintained good relations with the new monarch, José Bonaparte, imposed by Napoleon. It is at a court gathering where French visitors abounded that she meets French General Antonio Cristóbal Merlín, who had been granted the title of Count of Merlín a few years before (1809), whom she marries in 1811, at the age of 20. The reasons for the wedding respond in large measure to Napoleon's policy of promoting marriages between Spanish nobility and officers of the occupying army.

The defeat of the French in Spain forces the counts of Jaruco to move to Paris where the Bourbon dynasty has been established on the throne with Luis XVIII. In France, the Countess of Merlín converts her salons into the center of an important gathering, in which important figures from the arts, letters, and political life of the era participate, which further encourages her interest in more refined culture.

Her salons are frequented by personalities such as Rossini, Meyerbeer, Musset, Listz, Chopin, Balzac, Orfila, María Malibrán, and George Sand, among others. The Countess of Merlín, in addition to being famous for her singing, due to her privileged voice, is a successful writer in the French language. Among her writings, it is worth highlighting her autobiography My First Twelve Years (1831), an account of her childhood; the biography, History of Sister Inés, which recounts the life of a nun from the Convento de Santa Clara in La Habana, and The Story of a Woman of the World, published in 1838 simultaneously in Paris and Brussels, and even translated into English and Italian, which constitutes an account of the brief and unfortunate life of her friend and Spanish singer María García Malibrán.

It should also be noted what could be considered a travel narrative, La Habana, a detailed account in epistolary form of a trip she made to Cuba in 1840.

She is also the author of other works of lesser importance such as Lola and María, Les Lionnes de París (1845), Le Duc d'Athénes. Before publication of her works, she would usually publish fragments in journals. Her text that today draws more attention from literary criticism is Viaje a La Habana. The book, in three volumes, completed by late 1842, is published in French in 1844 and in the same year, in a considerably reduced version with the title Viaje a La Habana, in Madrid, translated into Spanish. It is a travel narrative in epistolary form: 36 letters (only 10 in the Spanish version), addressed to relatives, friends, acquaintances, artists, men of science, and influential figures.

She dies in Paris, at age 63, on March 31, 1852. Her tomb is located in that city's cemetery.