Frances Erskine Inglis, daughter of a prominent lawyer and Freemason, was born in Edinburgh in 1804. As the Marquesa de Calderón de la Barca, she died in Madrid's Royal Palace in 1882. During her life she was a teacher, legation hostess, and successful author, remembered now for her travel classic Life in Mexico and semi-fictional The Attaché in Madrid. But her books tell nothing about the greater part of her far-ranging career, which led through a half-dozen countries in response to bankruptcy, extortion, marriage, diplomacy, and revolution. For this colorful biography the authors have drawn from many sources, including contemporary memoirs, diaries, and numerous letters by and about Madame Calderón. Sometimes her trenchant commentary on people and places flared into newspaper controversy. From all that can be discovered about her, she emerges as a person of high abilities, energy, and nerve. In addition to the spirited woman at the center of the story, there are also her extraordinary family and a cast of memorable minor characters.

Originally published in 1843, Fanny Calderon de la Barca, gives her spirited account of living in Mexico–from her travels with her husband through Mexico as the Spanish diplomat to the daily struggles with finding good help–Fanny gives the reader an enlivened picture of the life and times of a country still struggling with independence.

Women experience and portray travel differently: Gender matters - irreducibly and complexly. Building on recent scholarship in women's travel writing, these provocative essays not only affirm the impact of gender, but also cast women's journeys against coordinates such as race, class, culture, religion, economics, politics, and history. The book's scope is unique: Women travelers extend in time from Victorian memsahibs to contemporary «road girls», and topics range from Anna Leonowens's slanted portrayal of Siam - later popularized in the movie, The King and I, to current feminist «descripting» of the male-road-buddy genre. The extensive array of writers examined includes Nancy Prince, Frances Trollope, Cameron Tuttle, Lady Mary Montagu, Catherine Oddie, Kate Karko, Frances Calderón de la Barca, Rosamond Lawrence, Zilpha Elaw, Alexandra David-Néel, Amelia Edwards, Erica Lopez, Paule Marshall, Bharati Mukherjee, and Marilynne Robinson.

Two centuries of writers drawn to Mexico—from D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and Tennessee Williams to Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, and Sandra Cisneros This scintillating literary travel guide gathers the work of great writers celebrating Mexico in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Ranging from 1843 to the present, Mexico in Mind offers a remarkably varied sampling of English-speaking writers’ impressions of the land south of the border. John Reed rides with Pancho Villa in 1914; Graham Greene defends Mexico’s priests; Langston Hughes describes a bullfight; Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs find Mexico intoxicating; Alice Adams visits Frida Kahlo’s house; Ann Louise Bardach meets the mysterious Subcommandante Marcos face to face. Fictional accounts are equally vivid, including poems by Muriel Rukeyser, Archibald Macleish, and Sandra Cisneros, short stories by Katherine Anne Porter and Ray Bradbury, and excerpts from John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, and Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. From the bustle of Mexico City to coffee planations in remote Chiapas, from Mayan ruins to the markets at Oaxaca, the scenes evoked in this anthology reflect the rich variety of the place and its history, sure to enchant vacationers, expatriates, and armchair travelers everywhere. Alice Adams • Ann Louise Bardach • Ray Bradbury • William S. Burroughs • Frances Calderón de la Barca • Ana Castillo • Sandra Cisneros • Anita Desai • Erna Fergusson • Charles Macomb Flandrau • Donna Gershten • Graham Greene • Langston Hughes • Fanny Inglehart • Gary Jennings • Diana Kennedy • Jack Kerouac • D. H. Lawrence • Malcolm Lowry • Archibald Macleish • Rubén Martínez • Tom Miller • Katherine Anne Porter • John Reed • Luis Rodriguez • Richard Rodriguez • Muriel Rukeyser • Salman Rushdie • John Steinbeck • Edward Weston • Tennessee Williams From the Trade Paperback edition.

Fact is torn from fiction in this first biography of Mexico’s famous independence heroine, which also traces her subsequent journey from history to myth. María Ignacia Rodríguez de Velasco y Osorio Barba (1778–1850) is an iconic figure in Mexican history. Known by the nickname “La Güera Rodríguez” because she was so fair, she is said to have possessed a remarkably sharp wit, a face fit for statuary, and a penchant for defying the status quo. Charming influential figures such as Simon Bolívar, Alexander von Humboldt, and Agustín de Iturbide, she utilized gold and guile in equal measure to support the independence movement—or so the stories say. In La Güera Rodríguez, Silvia Marina Arrom approaches the legends of Rodríguez de Velasco with a keen eye, seeking to disentangle the woman from the myth. Arrom uses a wide array of primary sources from the period to piece together an intimate portrait of this remarkable woman, followed by a review of her evolving representation in Mexican arts and letters that shows how the legends became ever more fanciful after her death. How much of the story is rooted in fact, and how much is fiction sculpted to fit the cultural sensibilities of a given moment in time? In our contemporary moment of unprecedented misinformation, it is particularly relevant to analyze how and why falsehoods become part of historical memory. La Güera Rodriguez will prove an indispensable resource for those searching to understand late-colonial Mexico, the role of women in the independence movement, and the use of historic figures in crafting national narratives.