For the Fishers, shown here on their honeymoon in Mexico and also during later years, Frances Calderón de la Barca was a lifelong labor of love.

As a young woman, Marion Hall worked for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her future husband, Howard T. Fisher, was an architect and later the founder of the Laboratory for Computer Graphics at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. When Marion and Howard married in 1939, they each had previously read and relished Life in Mexico, published in 1843.
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
As a hobby that enriched their frequent visits to Mexico over a period of a quarter-century, the Fishers created the highly praised 1966 Doubleday edition of Madame Calderón’s vivid classic. After finishing that project, they turned to this biography, for which they had started research when they married. Although they died before shaping the book into final form, it has been completed by their son Alan H. Fisher, a lawyer and guidebook writer. For him Madame Calderón has been like a close relative since the time of his earliest memories.