CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Marcelina Almeida

Argentine-born Uruguayan writer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ28916912
Source-derived summary

Marcelina Almeida (c. 1830 – 1880), was an Argentine-born Uruguayan writer living in Montevideo, since she was young. Almeida used the pseudonyms Abel and Reine mi bella acclamada (anagram of her full name) to sign her contributions in publications of the time. Her work, Por una fortuna una cruz, is considered the first Uruguayan feminist novel.

Biography

Marcelina Almeida Abel was born in Argentina, ca. 1830. In a poem dedicated to Almeida, Francisco Acuña de Figueroa describes her as Uruguayan by adoption, born in Argentina.

Almeida's romantic novel Por una fortuna una cruz was published in Montevideo in 1860. Its central theme is "the forced marriage of a fifteen-year-old girl with a twenty-five-year-old man". The work generated an intense debate in the Montevideo press of the time. Not only was the literary quality of it discussed, but also the fact that a woman writer questioned the institution of marriage.

Editorial summary

“Marcelina Almeida” enters the record as argentine-born Uruguayan writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marcelina, Almeida and Argentine-born can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1830, 1880, 1860—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Marcelina, Almeida and Argentine-born.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Marcelina Almeida” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Marcelina, Almeida and Argentine-born provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28916912. The first chronological checks are 1830, 1880 and 1860.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Marcelina Almeida”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Marcelina Almeida primary sources, Marcelina Almeida archive and Marcelina research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marcelina Almeida”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Marcelina Almeida” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.