Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Spain’s most celebrated modern poet, was born in 1898 near Granada. Poet, dramatist, musician and artist, he was the author of The Gypsy Ballad Book (1928), Poet in New York (1940) and the three tragedies, Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936). After his return from New York and Cuba to Republican Spain in 1930, he devoted himself to the theatre, writing three tragedies including Blood Wedding (1933). An outspoken supporter of the Republic, he was assassinated at the height of his fame by Nationalist partisans in Granada in 1936, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War.