Abel Posse
Abel Parentini Posse was born on 7 January 1934, in the Argentine city of Córdoba where he only lived the first two years of his life. Two years after birth the family moved to the capital city of Buenos Aires due to his father's work commitments. His mother, Elba Alicia Posse, belonged to the creole landed oligarchy of Galician descent who held vast sugar mill estates in the North West province of Tucuman. Amongst the influential members of the Posse clan in the 19th century, the liberal Julio Argentino Roca stands out, twice president of the republic from 1880 to 1886 and also 1898 to 1904 (3). Posse fictionalized 19th century Tucuman in his novel El inquietante día de la vida (2001), where two distant family relatives are the protagonists; his maternal great-grandfather, Felipe Segundo Posse, and Julio Victor Posse, patron of the arts in the sugar producing province until the 1940s.
Marcel Schwob
At age 11 he discovered the work of Edgar Allan Poe translated by Charles Baudelaire. He then read the original versions of his tales in English and they proved to be a lifelong influence in his writing. In 1878-1879, he studied at the "Lycée" of Nantes where he won the 1st Prize for Excellence. In 1881, he was sent to Paris to live with his maternal uncle Leon Cahun, Chief Librarian of the "Mazarine Library", and continue his studies at the "Lycée Louis-le-Grand", where he became friends with Léon Daudet and Paul Claudel. He developed a gift for languages and quickly became multilingual. In 1884, he discovered Robert Louis Stevenson, who was to become one of his friends and role models. He studied philology and Sanscrit under Ferdinand de Saussure at the "École Pratique des Hautes Études" in 1883-4. He then completed his military service in Vannes, joining the artillery.