Horacio Quiroga Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Poetry Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Horacio Quiroga was a Uruguayan poet, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was known for writing stories set in the jungle to try and use the bizarre and the supernatural in order to illustrate the struggle of animal and man to survive. He was very good at portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. His influence can also be seen today in the work of Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar.

He was born on December 31, 1878 and passed on February 19, 1937. He was born in the city of Salto, the sixth child and the second son of his parents who belonged to a middle class family. When he was born, his father had been working 18 years as the head of the Argentine vice-consulate. His father passed away from an accident with a gun when Quiroga was very young.

Horacio attended school in the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo. He also studied at the National College and attended the Polytechnic Institute of Montevideo for technical training. From a young age, he was interested in many different subjects and activities such as chemistry, literature, cycling, photography, country life and more. He founded a cycling club and worked in a machinery repair shop, gradually becoming more interested in philosophy.

He was twenty-two years old when he first got interested in poetry. He found the work of Leopoldo Lugones and Edgar Allen Poe, which led him to experiment with different forms and styles of poetic expression. He started publishing poems in his home town and while studying and working collaborated with different publications like La Revista and La Reforma.

It was during the Carnival of 1898 where he met his first love Mary Esther Jurkovski. This would inspire two of his important works, Las sacrificadas and the 1912 work which translates to ‘A Season of Love’. The girl’s parents disapproved of the relationship because of the Gentile status of Quiroga and the couple had to separate. He founded the magazine Revista de Salto in 1899 and then his father committed suicide the same year, and he saw the death. He took a trip to Paris with the inheritance money but the trip was a failure, so he returned to Uruguay disheartened.

When the author came back, he gathered his friends together and they founded a literary lab for their experimental writing called The Consistory of The Gay Science. In 1901, he published his first book Coral Reefs but also had to contend with the death of his siblings to typhoid fever and then later was involved with the accidental shooting of his friend while preparing with him for a duel. He was investigated but released and exonerated from being responsible. Full of grief and guilt, he dissolved the Consistory and moved to Argentina to live with his sister Maria.

He would become a professor of Spanish in 1903 at the British School of Buenos Aires. He would then go on an expedition to the jungle of Misiones, which made a big impression on him. He would spend the last of his inheritance on land for cotton, and his style was personally changed by this experience. He came back to Buenos Aires and embraced the short story, publishing his book of stories in 1904 called The Crime of Another. The publication of his horror story The Feather Pillow and eight other stories led to the author becoming famous and his writing very in-demand.

Quiroga would return to the jungle and bought a farm. He would also fall in love with a teen student named Ava Marie and they got married. In 1911 she gave birth to their first child. She would then have another child a son, and the author took over their upbringing. The relationship between the two eventually deteriorated and she died on December 14, 1915 after ingesting a fatal dose of mercury dichloride earlier.

The author then went to Buenos Aires with his children where he was made an under-secretary general accountant at the Uruguayan Consulate. He collected stories that he released in Tales of Love, Madness, and Death, which came out in 1917. The first volume was an immediate commercial and critical success. The next year he would publish Jungle Tales, also known as Jungle Stories, and dedicated the book to his children.

He would release several more works as the years went on, from The Slaughtered to Anaconda to The Desert. For a time he was a film critic and also penned a screenplay for the feature film The Florida Raft that never came to fruition.

The author came back to Misiones and was in love with a 22 year old Ana Maria Palacio. His parents did not approve and ultimately took her away, forcing him to give up his love. He came back to Buenos Aires in 1926, renting a villa and being honored by a major publisher. He would go to classical concerts and read technical texts as well as mechanical manuals and books on physics and art. He decided to raise wild animals while releasing his book of short stories Exiles in 1927. He also fell for Maria Elena Bravo, who married him when he was 49 years old and she had not yet reached 20 years of age.

He would settle again in Misiones in 1932 with his wife and third daughter and retired there, getting a degree that transferred his consular office to a city nearby and living in the jungle with his family. His services were declined, he was expelled from the consulate, and his wife didn’t like living in the jungle. He published a collection of short stories in 1935 titled Beyond. He committed suicide on February 19, 1937.

Anaconda is an early collection of stories by Horacio Quiroga. Readers will immediately be pulled in to the center of the South American rain forest. The author brings together ecological awareness, allegory, adventure and more, coming up with a narrative where animals are able to speak, think, and struggle for survival.

In this title story is Anaconda, a serpent busy leading a community of reptiles in a confrontation with humankind. Throughout this conflict, the author looks at themes or survival, intelligence, territory, and resistance. The jungle is a stage for battle between species, civilization, and the natural world.

These stories are infused with authenticity pulled with details from his life spent in the Misiones region. The winding rivers, the dense vegetation, the heat, and the wildlife are brought to life with sensory precision. Nature is viewed as harsh, beautiful, and able to govern itself by its own laws. The Anaconda animals all have their own personalities and motivations but find themselves rooted in instinct as well as ecological reality.

With symbolic resonance and an awareness of both the effects of humans and the resilience of the natural world, the prose of this book and the narrative voice make it a must-read. This book shows just how good Quiroga is at storytelling and displays his connection to the landscape of the rain forest. Check this book out, something just as relevant as ever today in this time of environmental fragility, and enjoy an informative and very interesting read!

Jungle Stories is an early book from Horacio Quiroga. It can help readers to learn Spanish words on their own and the modern editions are illustrated so young readers can particularly enjoy and appreciate them.

Readers can begin this book and immediately start learning new words in Spanish thanks to context. This book is a collection of short stories featuring talking jungle animals from South America that has been adapted from ‘Cuentos de la Selva’. Check it out to personally see all of the color and detail!