In 1898, Lorca was born in an Andalusian village near Granada, Spain, to a landowning farmer and a village schoolmistress. He lived in this rural area for ten years, absorbing the folk culture and the widespread poverty of southern Spain, before his family moved to the provincial capital of Granada. His wealthy parents' liberal convictions were very important to his education there, and he began to meet progressive intellectuals as a teenager at the University of Granada. Already becoming known as a prodigious talent, Lorca published his first book, a travelogue entitled Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes) in 1918.

He then transferred to the University of Madrid, where he was influenced by developing European artistic movements and began a relationship with the artist Salvador Dalí, who later became a famous figure in the surrealist movement. Dalí was extremely influential over Lorca's work (and vice versa...