His father was a German furniture carpenter and his mother a Spanish woman with the name María Josefa Martínez Calleja.

Los amantes de Teruel at once made the author's reputation, but Doña Mencía (1840) and Alfonso el Casto (1841) were disappointments; it was not until 1845 that he repeated his former success with La jura en Santa Gadea.

[1] In 1900, Don Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Juan's son, published Bibliografía in Madrid which presents in succinct form as complete a list of his father's writings.

It is the life of an author and a scholar, who through hard work and conscientious effort, secured for himself an honorable place among Spain's men of letters.

After retiring from the National Library in 1875, his strength of body and mind began to give way, and after losing his second wife, Salvadora Hiriart, he failed rapidly and died at his home in Madrid on 2 August 1880.