Victoria Ocampo

Ramona Victoria Epifanía Rufina Ocampo was born on April 7, 1890, in Buenos Aires into an aristocratic patrician dynasty. Educated in French by private tutors, she rebelled against conservative patriarchal conventions, co-founding the Argentine Women's Union in 1936 to fight for female voting rights.

In 1931, advised by Waldo Frank and Eduardo Mallea, Ocampo founded the literary magazine and publishing house Sur, which for four decades was the most prestigious intellectual periodical in the Hispanic world. She introduced Borges, Bioy Casares, and Cortázar to international audiences and published first Spanish translations of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot. In 1977, she became the first woman ever elected to the Argentine Academy of Letters, bequeathing Villa Ocampo to UNESCO.