Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895) was a Colombian writer, soldier, and politician. Born into wealth, Isaacs was raised by an English Jewish father and a mother with Spanish heritage. He was educated from a young age, attending school in Bogotá without completing his degree. In 1854, he entered the fight against the military dictatorship of General José María Melo and married Felisa González Umaña in 1856. For the next several years, he struggled to establish himself as a merchant, eventually turning to literature. In 1860, he joined the Colombian Civil War and fought until the conflict came to an end in 1862. Soon after the war, he began building his reputation as a writer, finding publication for his poems and working on a draft of his first novel. When María appeared in 1867, Isaacs was praised for his emotional power and became recognized as a central figure of Colombian literature. Despite his success, he never managed to recapture the vision that inspired his early works, dedicating himself to a life in politics instead. María remains an essential work of Spanish-language Romanticism and has earned Isaacs comparison to such literary greats as Chateaubriand and Edgar Allan Poe.
