Julio Cortázar Literary Manuscripts

Argentine author and translator. Born August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, to Argentine parents. Died Feb. 12, 1984, in Paris, France. His family returned to Argentina in 1919 from Belgium. After obtaining a degree in 1932 as a high school teacher, Cortázar taught from 1937-1944. He was awarded a degree in French literature from the University of Buenos Aires in 1937, began writing short stories and published his first book of poems Presencia in 1938. He moved to Mendoza in 1944 to teach literature at the Universidad de Cuyo. Due to his views, he resigned in 1945 and moved to Buenos Aires, where he worked for the Cámara del Libro from 1946-1948 and as a public translator from 1948 to 1951. When he moved to Paris in 1951, he worked as a translator for UNESCO (1952-1984) and continued to write until his death. His philosophy of the novel and his life as a voluntary exile are expressed in Rayuela ( Hopscotch), which he began writing in 1952 in Paris, and published in Buenos Aires in 1963. The literary manuscript in the Benson collection reflects its complexity. Cortázar obtained the Prix Medicis in 1974 for Libro de Manuel, the manuscript of which is also at the Benson Collection.

Cortázar travelled extensively throughout his life and remained an advocate of human rights and political freedom in Latin America.