Julio Herrera y Reissig

The sickly child of a wealthy and influential Uruguayan clan, Julio Herrera y Reissig devoted the last ten years of his life to writing some of the most poignant turn-of-the-century modernista poetry Uruguay had ever seen. While a celebrated author during his lifetime, his last collection of poems, Los peregrinos de piedra (“Stone Pilgrims,” 1909) reveals an Herrera y Reissig who, far from contented, had turned away from the flowery conventions of modernismo to fix his gaze on country life with newfound brio and terse, insightful verse.