ISAACS, JORGE (1837-1895), Colombian poet and novel ist, was born at Cali, in the province of Cauca, Colombia, in April 1837, the son of a prosperous English Jew. He received an excellent education, first at Bogota and later in England. Dur ing the War of the Cauca (186o-63), he was reduced to poverty by the destruction of his patrimony in the Cauca valley. Settling in Bogota, in 1864 he published a slight volume of Poesias that attracted considerable attention, and in 1867, a novel, Maria, which won immediate recognition and remains his chief title to fame. Seizing the opportunity thus opened to him for a political career, he entered public life, and in 1871-72 was appointed consul-general in Chile. On his return he served in the provincial legislatures of Cauca, Cundinamarca and Antioquia, and filled numerous political, educational and editorial positions. He died in AbagUe on April 17, 1895. Although he continued to write
until his death, and was a generous contributor to periodical literature, none of his later efforts fulfilled the promise of his first two volumes. Maria, his best work, is the most famous Spanish American novel. An idyllic picture, very likely autobiographical, of life among the Cordilleras of his native Cauca valley, it has been called by one eminent critic "the poem of America," and has been translated into several foreign languages. Among his poems, notable are "Rio Moro" (River Moro), "La Noche Callada" (The Silent Night), and "La Tumba del Soldado" (The Soldier's Tomb) ; Saulo is part of an uncompleted drama; La revolution radical en Antioquia is his most important prose work outside of fiction.
See Antonio Gomez Restrepo: "La literatura colombiana," Revue Hispanique, vol. xliii. (Paris, 1918).