Born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento in Metapa, Nicaragua in 1867, Rubén Darío is largely considered the father of ‘modernismo’ in Latin America. This poet, essayist and journalist travelled widely across the Americas and Europe and was a key figure in articulating a new Latin American voice on the world literary stage. Darío’s work in unifying the disparate threads of a pan-American literature was crucial in the development of modernismo, and the resultant vanguard literary forms on the continent.