SOURCE: Nunn, Marshall E. “Some Notes on the Cuban Novel, Cecilia Valdés.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 24, no. 95 (July 1947): 184-86.

In the following essay, Nunn discusses Villaverde's graphic representations of the lives and deaths of Cuban slaves between 1830 and 1840.

Although Villaverde wrote the first part of Cecilia Valdés in 1838, it was not published until the following year. He immediately began his second part but did very little on it, for a variety of reasons. One was that he left Havana and went to Matanzas as a teacher. There he also wrote another novel, publishing it in 1841. After returning to the capital in the following year, he became one of the editors of El Faro Industrial until 1848, in which year he was arrested by the Spanish authorities. In 1858, on his return to the island after nine years in the United States, a publisher suggested his finishing and revising...