María Luisa Bombal

María Luisa Bombal Anthes (; Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 – 6 May 1980) was a Chilean novelist and poet. Her work incorporates erotic, surrealist, and feminist themes. She was a recipient of the Santiago Municipal Literature Award. In 1938 she published her most famous novel The Shrouded Woman (Spanish: La amortajada).

Biography María Luisa was born in 1910 to Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht.

As a child, Bombal attended the Catholic girls school Colegio de los Sagrados Corazones in Santiago. After her father's death in 1919, Bombal went with her mother and sisters to live in Paris, where she finished her studies at the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève. Bombal enrolled at the University of Paris, where she studied literature and philosophy. She also attended the Lycée La Bruyère and the Sorbonne, where she began to write. After Bombal completed her university studies, she returned to Chile in 1931, where she reunited with her family.

Bombal also studied violin with Jacques Thibaud and drama with Charles Dolan.

In 1938 Bombal published La amortajada, which earned her the Santiago Municipal Literature Award in 1941. While living in the United States, she wrote a novel in English, The House of Mist, which was a translation and extensive readaptation of her Spanish-language novel La última niebla. The House of Mist was later translated into Spanish by Lucía Guerra.

Personal life Upon her return to South America from Paris in 1931 she had an intense romance with a pioneer in civil aviation, Eulogio Sánchez Errázuriz (1903–1956), who did not share her interest in literature. Sánchez later distanced himself from Bombal, causing her to suffer from depression; after Sánchez stopped responding to her letters, she attempted suicide by shooting herself in the shoulder during a social gathering at his apartment. In 1933, she married the homosexual painter Jorge Larco (1897–1967), forming with him a lavender marriage.

About her work Commonly, Bombal is depicted as an “ethereal and tragic woman, inclined toward the poetic and the sentimental.”

Selected works Novels

La última niebla (1934) La amortajada (1938) The House of Mist (1947, English readaptation of La última niebla) The Shrouded Woman (1947, English readaptation of La amortajada)

Stories

Las islas nuevas (1939) El árbol (1939) Trenzas (1940) Lo secreto (1944) La historia de María Griselda (1946)

Chronicles

Mar, cielo y tierra (1940) Washington, ciudad de las ardillas (1943) La maja y el ruiseñor (1960)

Other writings

Reseña cinematográfica de Puerta cerrada (1939) En Nueva York con Sherwood Anderson (entrevista) (1939) Inauguración del sello Pauta (1973) Discurso en la Academia Chilena de la Lengua (1977)