Manuel González Prada

Manuel González Prada
Born(1844-01-05)5 January 1844
Died22 July 1918(1918-07-22) (aged 74)
Lima, Peru
Burial placeCementerio Presbítero Matías Maestro
12°02′34″S 77°00′34″W / 12.042852552053436°S 77.00957408578998°W / -12.042852552053436; -77.00957408578998
Alma materReal Convictorio de San Carlos
Known forInfluences on indigenismo and Peruvian nationalism
Political partyNational Union

Jose Manuel de los Reyes González de Prada y Ulloa (Lima, 5 January 1844 Lima, 22 July 1918) was a Peruvian politician and anarchist, literary critic and director of the National Library of Peru. The first writer to criticize the oligarchy within Peru, he is well remembered as a social critic who helped develop Peruvian intellectual thought in the early twentieth century, as well as the academic style known as modernismo.

He was born into the aristocratic class. He was close in spirit to Clorinda Matto de Turner whose first novel, Torn from the Nest approached political indigenismo, and to Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, who like González Prada, practiced a positivism sui generis.