Juan Perez de Montalban

Juan Pérez de Montalbán (1602 – 25 June 1638) was a Spanish Catholic priest, dramatist, poet and novelist.

Biography He was born in Madrid. At the age of eighteen, he became a licentiate in theology. He was ordained priest in 1625 and appointed notary to the Inquisition. A notable member of the Medrano Academy, in 1619 he began writing for the stage under the guidance of Lope de Vega, who is said to have assisted him in composing El Orfeo en lengua castellana (1624), a poem intended to compete with Jáuregui's Orfeo, published earlier in the same year.

Montalbán's father, a publisher at Madrid, issued a pirated edition of Quevedo's Buscón, which roused an angry controversy. The violence of these polemics, the strain of overwork, and the death of Lope de Vega so affected Montalbán that he became insane; he died in Madrid on 25 June 1638. His last work was a eulogistic biography of Lope de Vega in the Fama póstuma (1636).

A libellous attack on Quevedo, entitled El Tribunal de la justa venganza (1635), is often ascribed to Montalbán. Montalbán's reputation was such that sometimes his name appeared on works by other writers.