Jorge Isaacs

Jorge Isaacs was born in Cali, Colombia, in 1837, into a family of Anglo-Jewish and Spanish descent. He studied in Popayán and Bogotá, and later engaged in politics, serving as a conservative congressman and diplomat. His literary fame rests almost entirely on María (1867), a novel that became an instant classic and remains one of the most widely read works of Spanish American romanticism. The novel, a tragic love story set on a sugar plantation, is celebrated for its lyrical prose and its portrayal of the Colombian countryside. Isaacs also wrote poetry, collected in Poesías (1864), but none of his later works matched the success of María. He died in Ibagué in 1895, leaving a lasting legacy as a pioneer of the Latin American novel.