1. Jorge Isaacs Ferrer was a Colombian writer, politician and soldier.
18 Facts About Jorge Isaacs
1. 2.
Jorge Isaacs's father was George Henry Isaacs, an English Jew originally from Jamaica.
3.
Jorge Isaacs first settled in Choco, where he made a fortune from gold mining and trade with the Caribbean.
4.
Jorge Isaacs then moved to Cali where he applied for his citizenship from Simon Bolivar.
5.
Jorge Isaacs married Manuela Ferrer Scarpetta, daughter of a Spanish Navy officer.
6.
Jorge Isaacs owned two haciendas near Cali, called "La Manuelita" and "El Paraiso".
7.
Jorge Isaacs was born in Quibdo, Republic of New Granada in 1837.
8.
Jorge Isaacs was first educated in Cali, then in Popayan and, finally, in Bogota between 1848 and 1852.
9.
In 1856 Jorge Isaacs married Felisa Gonzalez Umana, who was fourteen years-old at the time and they went on to have many children.
10.
Jorge Isaacs tried unsuccessfully to become a merchant as his father.
11.
Jorge Isaacs then turned to literature and wrote his first poems between 1859 and 1860.
12.
Jorge Isaacs took arms again in 1860, this time against General Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, and saw action in the Battle of Manizales during the Colombian Civil War.
13.
In 1861 Jorge Isaacs's father died; when the war ended Jorge Isaacs returned to Cali to take over the administration of his father's businesses, but he found them deeply in debt.
14.
The members of the reader's club "El Mosaico" offered to publish his poems after Jorge Isaacs read them in one of their sessions.
15.
That year Jorge Isaacs took a job as the supervisor of the construction of a horse-path between Buenaventura and Cali and started to write Maria.
16.
Jorge Isaacs explored the Magdalena Department, in the north of Colombia, where he found important coal and oil deposits.
17.
Jorge Isaacs spent the last years of his life in the city of Ibague in Tolima where was planning to write a historical novel.
18.
In Colombia as well as in other Latin American countries, Jorge Isaacs became a well recognized figure.