He was born in Monóvar, Alicante, in June 1873. He was the eldest of nine siblings who grew up in a wealthy, middle-class family. His name was not the only thing Azorín would change throughout his life.
After beginning his education with the Piarists in Yecla, Azorín moved to Valencia in 1888 to study law. There, he developed a penchant for journalism and writing, as well as an interest in revolutionary and anarchist ideas, something that would change radically throughout his life.
His passion for writing soon blossomed both in the newspapers he contributed to and in the works he had begun to publish: Moratín (1893) and Buscapiés (1894), for which he used pseudonyms such as Cándido and Ahrrimán, which are now virtually impossible to find. Once in Madrid, he befriended other young writers, such as Valle-Inclán, Baroja, and Juan Ramón Jiménez, who would later become known as the Generation of '98.
The name, incidentally, was coined by Azorín himself in his 1913 essay ‘Clásicos y modernos,’ a genre he would cultivate extensively as it allowed him to develop the strengths of his writing: his attention to and description of the landscape and Spanish cultural tradition.
