Pablo Neruda was born in 1904 in Parral, Chile. He was given the name Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto at birth; his mother, a schoolteacher, died when he was two months old. Soon after, his father, José del Carmen Reyes Morales, who worked on the railway, moved his son to the city of Temuco, where he married the mother of his other elder son, Rodolfo. The children were raised together, along with Neruda's other half-sibling, Laura.
As a child, Neruda was mentored by the famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, who was also the head of his local school. He started writing when he was very young, writing first under the name Neftalí Reyes; he adopted the pseudonym Pablo Neruda around...
