José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

Who was José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi?

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Mexican writer and political journalist, best known as the author of El Periquillo Sarniento, translated as The Mangy Parrot in English, reputed to be the first novel written in Latin America.

Lizardi, as he is generally known, was born in Mexico City when it was still the capital of the colonial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. His father was a physician employed in and around Mexico City, who for a time supplemented the family income by writing. Likewise, his mother came from a family of modest but "decent" means; her own father had been a bookseller in the nearby city of Puebla.

The death of Lizardi’s father after a short illness in 1798 forced the young man to leave his studies in the Colegio de San Ildefonso and enter the civil service as a minor magistrate in the Taxco-Acapulco region. He married in Taxco in 1805.

The necessity of providing for a growing family led Lizardi to supplement his meager income as his father had, by writing. He began his literary career in 1808 by publishing a poem in honor of Ferdinand VII of Spain.