Blanco White and the Making of Anglo‐Hispanic Romanticism

Abstract

José Blanco White (1775–1841) forges an authorial voice that articulates Anglo‐Hispanic Romanticism, and that extends transatlantic and transnational readings of the period beyond monolingual boundaries to include the Spanish‐speaking world. His authorial persona, like Olaudah Equiano’s, offers a rare glimpse into Romantic metropolitan culture understood in a global context, and the process of building a British identity, from having to learn English at age 35 to converting to Anglicanism, and later, Unitarianism. The literary notoriety he earned from Letters from Spain (1822) and articles in the New Monthly Magazine earned him the friendships of authors such as S. T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Felicia Hemans. Through his writings in the quarterly Variedades (1823–1825), Blanco “doubles” his literary presence. He addresses an audience of Spanish speakers around the globe and shapes a political and cultural imaginary that creates temporal synchrony between locations as distant as Peru and London. Variedades is part of Rudolph Ackermann’s formidable Spanish publishing enterprise, which enlisted the talent of Spanish and Latin American exiles like Blanco to publish more than 100 titles for Spanish‐speaking markets. Blanco White’s mediations between English and Spanish identities and audiences invite further research into hybridity and Romanticism, and anticipate contemporary concerns about language, translation, identity, and nation.