Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide

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University of Texas Press, Sep 24, 2013 - Biography & Autobiography - 332 pages

The "first lady of Argentine letters," Victoria Ocampo is best known as the architect of cultural bridges between the American and European continents and as the founder and director of Sur, an influential South American literary review and publishing house.

In this first biographical study in English of "la superbe Argentine," originally published in 1979, Doris Meyer considers Victoria Ocampo's role in introducing European and North American writers and artists to the South American public—through the pages of her review, through translations of their work, and through lecture tours and recitations. She examines Ocampo's personal relationships with some of the most illustrious writers and thinkers of this century—including José Ortega y Gasset, Rabindranath Tagore, Count Hermann Keyserling, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Monnier, Vita Sackville-West, Gabriela Mistral, and many others. And she portrays an extraordinary woman who rebelled against the strictures of family and social class to become a leading personality in the fight for women's rights in Argentina and, later, a steadfast opponent of the Perón regime, for which she was sent to jail in 1953.

Fifteen of Victoria Ocampo's essays, selected from her more than ten volumes of prose and translated by Doris Meyer, complement the biographical study.

 

Contents

Preface
The Ocampos and the Aguirres
Charting the Course Books and Heroes
Widening Horizons
Count Hermann Keyserling
Barriers and Bridges
A Soul Without aPassport
The Argentine Womens Union
Feminism and the Perón Regime
A Postscript
Writing LikeaWoman
Photographs
A King PassesBy
Gabriela Mistral and the Nobel Prize
Albert Camus Heroes Withand Without Space Suits
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Doris Meyer is Roman S. & Tatiana Weller Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College .

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