Zenobia Camprubí Aymar (31 August 1887 – 25 October 1956) was a Spanish-born writer and poet; she was also a noted translator of the works of Rabindranath Tagore.
She was born in Malgrat de Mar (province of Barcelona, Catalonia) to a Puerto Rican mother and a Spanish father.
She later lived in the United States, studied at Columbia University, and spent the duration of the Spanish Civil War (18 July 1936 – 1 April 1939) writing her Diario ("Diary") in Cuba. Her brother, José Camprubí, was owner and publisher of La Prensa, New York's most important Spanish-language daily newspaper, from 1918 to 1942.
She eventually became a professor at the University of Maryland before her death from ovarian cancer, aged 69, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, two days after her husband Juan Ramón Jiménez received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Early life
On August 31, 1887, Zenobia Salustiana Edith Camprubí y Aymar was born in Calle del Mar 87, in Malgrat de Mar (Barcelona) in a wealthy Spanish-Puerto Rican family. She was registered with the names of Zenobia, Salustiana, and Edith. Zenobia Camprubí Aymar was the daughter of Isabel Aymar Lucca and Raimundo Camprubí Escudero. Her maternal grandfather, Augusto Aymar, was a well-off American merchant and her grandmother was a member of a family of Corsicans, settled in Puerto Rico.
Both her mother and grandmother had studied in the best schools in the United States and had many family ties in the United States. Her father, Raimundo Camprubí, was an engineer of roads, canals and ports, and, belonged to a Catalan military family. Zenobia's parents married in Puerto Rico in 1879, where he had traveled to work for the construction of a highway between Ponce and Coamo. The couple had four children José (1879), Raimundo, Zenobia (1887) and Augusto (1890).
During the first two years of her life, when summer time arrived, the Camprubí family moved to ‘La Quinta’ in Malgrat to enjoy the pleasant Mediterranean climate in the summer season.
In the winter of 1890, her brother Augusto Camprubí Aymar was born in Barcelona. This would be the last year that Zenobia and her family enjoy the holidays in Malgrat, perhaps because of changes of post that her father had.
At the age of nine she traveled to the United States for the first time with her brother José and her mother. The reason was to enter his older brother in a high school in preparation for his subsequent entry into Harvard (Cambridge) and settle a matter of inheritance, due to the fact that her grandmother had died in 1895. After the appearance of Zenobia's health problems, the family was forced to move their residence to the municipality of Sarriá, Spain a year later. In this place, Zenobia met Maria Muntadas de Capará, with whom she eventually established a great friendship.
In 1900, Zenobia founded a partnership, together with her friend Maria Muntadas, that was called "Las Abejas Industriosas" ("The working bees"). By that time she had not yet reached thirteen years of age, but she was already showing a spirit of restlessness and organization.
In 1901, her father, Mr. Raimundo Camprubí, was assigned to Tarragona as Head of Public Works. Zenobia travelled with her mother and younger brother Augusto to Switzerland in search of a remedy for a rare ear and eye disease that her brother had suffered after diphtheria.
In March of the same year, the New York youth magazine St. Nicholas published a short story of Zenobia called A Narrow Escape. Also published was her autobiographical work Malgrat, inspired by her stay in the coastal town. Zenobia's father was then transferred to Valencia. During their stay in this city, the family lived on Calle Navelos 14. Zenobia wrote and published several literary works, among them, "The Garret I have known". Zenobia took care of the operation of the family house in Valencia because her mother left for a season with her family in Barcelona. She received a literary award consisting of a Gold Badge from St. Nicholas Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls for her work "When Grandmother went to school".
As a result of a marriage separation, Isabel Aymar (mother of Zenobia) and Zenobia, her daughter, moved to live in the United States in 1905. They settled in Newburgh, New York, where many family members and family friends lived. The trip began with a visit to Canada in September, accompanied by her maternal uncle José, and her brother Raimundo. They went to Québec, where her aunt Lillian was awaiting them.