The Argentine author, poet, and political theorist José Estéban Echeverría (1805-1851) pioneered the romantic mood in literature in the New World and also formulated the political ideals of a secret group combating the dictatorial regime of Rosas.

José Estéban Echeverría was born on Sept. 2, 1805, in Buenos Aires. His father died shortly thereafter, and the boy was raised by his mother and several doting aunts. For reasons unexplained and apparently beyond his control, he left school to take a job as a customshouse clerk.

Out of this reflective period came a determination to seek a fuller education than Echeverría's young country could provide. In 1826 Echeverría settled in Paris and resumed his formal studies, most significantly, political science from a sociological perspective. His reading broadened to include writers cultivating a new and exciting mode: Goethe, Schiller...