Author of novels, memoirs, and travel writings, Maria de las Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, better known as la Condesa de Merlin (1789-1852), is arguably one of Cuba's most engaging authors; yet until now her works have gone largely ignored.

Born in colonial Havana to an aristocratic Creole family, the future countess of Merlin left Cuba for Spain at an early age. Later, her marriage to the French count Antoine Christophe Merlin and the invasion of French Napoleonic troops precipitated another move to France, where she became one of the belles dames of Paris and began her literary career. She returned only once to Cuba after the death of her husband in 1840, a journey that produced Viaje a la Habana.

Upon her return to Paris, Merlin expanded this into La Havane, an ambitious three-volume account of the political, social, and economic organization of the island. From the viewpoint of feminist and psychoanalytical theory, Gender and Nationalism in Colonial Cuba explores the many ways in which issues of gender have contributed to Merlin's virtual absence from the canons of literature and from the discourses on Cuban national identity.

Mendez Rodenas seeks to restore Merlin as the first woman writer in Cuban literary history to articulate a sense of national identity, as well as being Cuba's first female historian. She focuses on Merlin's travel writings because they examine such issues as slavery, independence, nationhood, the role of women, education, and local literature.

In the process, she broadens our understanding of colonial Cuban history and expands our knowledge of the ways in which travel writing can influence a country's national literature.