PALMA, RICARDO (1833-1919), Peruvian man of letters, was born in Lima on Feb. 7, 1833. At the age of 20 he joined the navy, and in 1860 was forced by political exigencies to flee to Chile, where he devoted himself to journalism. Six years later, he returned to Lima, to join a revolutionary movement in favour of war with Spain, and participated in the engagement between the Spanish fleet and the batteries of Callao. In 1881, during the War of the Pacific, he took part in the battle of Miraflores in which the Peruvian forces were defeated, and during the Chilean occupation he had the courage to protest against the vandalistic destruction of the famous National Library by Chilean soldiery. After the war he was for a while director of La Prensa in Buenos Aires, but soon was recalled by the Peruvian Government to rebuild the National Library. In 1887 he founded the Peruvian Academy and in 1892 was sent to Spain as Peru's representative to the Fourth Centenary of the Discovery of America. His
literary career began in his youth with light verses and transla tions from Victor Hugo. The Anales de la inquisicion de Lima, which he had published in periodicals when he was in Chile, appeared in book form in 1863, and this was followed by poems entitled Semblanzas (1867) and Pasionarias (1870). But his fame chiefly derives from his Tradiciones, short prose sketches, mingled fact and fancy, of the colonial days of Peru. The first volume of the series appeared in 1872 as Tradiciones, and was succeeded by Ropa vieja (1889), Ropa apolillada (1891) and an Apendice a mis tiltimas tradiciones. The best of them have been collected in a single volume, under the title Las mejores tradiciones peruanas, one of the most popular books in Spanish-American literature. Palma died in Miraflores, Lima, on Oct. 6, 1919.
See V. G. Calderon, Semblanzas de America (Madrid, i9i9) ; W. B.