Miguel Cané

Born in Montevideo in 1851 while his family was living in exile, he returned to Argentina as a child and went on to become one of the best-known figures linked to the country's Generation of 1880. He studied at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, an experience that later inspired his most famous book, Juvenilia.

Alongside his literary work, he built a wide-ranging public career as a journalist, lawyer, academic, diplomat, and politician. That mix of public service and personal observation gave his writing a lively, worldly tone, especially in memoirs, travel pieces, and essays.

Today he is remembered above all for the elegance and immediacy of his prose, and for the way Juvenilia preserves a youthful, often humorous view of student life in 19th-century Buenos Aires. He died in Buenos Aires in 1905.