Ricardo Palma

Ricardo Palma was born in Lima, the capital of Peru, in 1833, of humble family. As a young man he wrote poems and plays and served as a naval purser; the warship he sailed on was wrecked and sank, and he narrowly escaped. Drawn into politics, he was exiled to Chile for three years after taking part in a failed coup. In 1881, during the War of the Pacific, the Chilean army occupied Lima and sacked the National Library of Peru; of more than fifty thousand volumes, only some seven hundred remained. After the war Palma was appointed director of the National Library; he wrote letters everywhere and called on people in person to collect books at home and abroad, earning the name 'the beggar librarian', and after more than twenty years of work the library again held over thirty thousand volumes. He devoted his life to gathering the archives and folk tales of colonial Peru, and is honoured as the father of Peruvian literature.