Manuel José Quintana y Lorenzo (April 11, 1772 - March 11, 1857), was a Spanish poet and man of letters.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (August 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Manuel José Quintana]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Manuel José Quintana}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Born, Died ...

Manuel José Quintana
Portrait by José Ribelles (1806)
Born	Manuel José Quintana y Lorenzo (1772-04-11)11 April 1772 Madrid, Spain
Died	11 March 1857(1857-03-11) (aged 84) Madrid, Spain
Nationality	Spanish
Genre	poetry
Seat J of the Real Academia Española
In office 1 March 1814 – 11 March 1857
Preceded by	Vicente Vera de Aragón
Succeeded by	Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto

Close

He was born at Madrid. After completing his studies at Salamanca he was called to the bar. In 1801 Quintana produced a tragedy, El Duque de Viseo, founded on M. G. Lewis's Castle Spectre; his Pelayo (1805), written on a patriotic theme, was more successful.^[1]

The first volume of his Vidas de Españoles célebres, containing lives of Spanish patriots, stirred the public imagination and secured Quintana the post of secretary to the Cortes during the French invasion. His proclamations and odes fanned the national enthusiasm into flame. But he was ill rewarded for his services, for on the return of Ferdinand VII he was imprisoned at Pamplona from 1814 to 1820. He was finally given a small post in the civil service, became tutor to Queen Isabella II, and was nominated senator. Though publicly crowned as the representative poet of Spain (1855), he seems to have lived in poverty.^[1]

Quintana died at the age of 84. His poems, thirty-four in number, are inspired by philanthropy and patriotism; the style is occasionally gallicized, and the thought is not profound, but his nobility of sentiment and resounding rhetoric attract many generations of Spaniards.^[1]