HEREDIA Y CAMPUZANO, JOSE MARIA (1803 1839), Cuban poet, was born at Santiago de Cuba on Dec. 31, 1803, studied at the University of Havana, and was called to the bar in 1823. In 1823 he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy against the Spanish Government, and was sentenced to banishment for life. He took refuge in the United States, published a volume of verses at New York in 1825 and then went to Mexico. In 1832 a collection of his poems was issued at Toluca, and in 1836 he obtained permission to visit Cuba for two months. Disappointed in his political ambitions and broken in health, Heredia returned to Mexico, and died at Toluca on May 21, 1839.
Many of his earlier pieces are merely clever translations from French, English and Italian ; but his originality is established by such poems as the Himno del desterrado, the epistle to Emilia, Desenganos, and the celebrated ode to Niagara. His patriotism and imagination have secured for Heredia a real supremacy among Spanish-American poets.
liricas de Jose Maria Heredia, with a preface by Elias Zerolo (Paris, 1893) • Poesias completes (Havana, 1913) • The Odes of Bello, Olmedo and Heredia, ed. by E. J. Hills (1920).