Ismael Mallari was one of the early Filipino writers in English. He is ranked as leading literary and art critic in the Philippines. More than anything else, he was an essayist.
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History
From his hometown Malabon in Rizal Province, Mallari went to the Philippine Normal School in Manila, then he went as a government pensionado to the University of Wisconsin (USA) for further studies in English, Education and Library Science. For his accomplishments, Mallari was included in the Pan-Pacific Who’s Who and the Who’s Who library Science. He's famous for his work "The Stranger" which focuses mainly on the life of a regular person to a good believing person. He had a gift of laughter as shown in his book "when I was a little Boy". He was a teacher in Philippine Normal University of the East.
He wrote "Values" which talks about the values that the people might have developed that should be changed by learning how to appreciate life.
Opinions
In his The Filipino IN English: A Critical Study with Anthology of Representative Essays (1912–1941), Prof. Leopoldo Yabes of the University of the Philippines says: "While he (Mallari) could not be ranked among the abler critics of the older school, he was conceded by a number of informed persons to be the best writer on problems of Architecture and city planning. He wrote on Architecture with the understanding and skill of a truly artistic temperament." Another noted literature, Puro Santillan Castrence, has this to say "One of the country’s most reliable essayist in English . . . Mallari’s forte in his essays was in his use of simple words neatly and economically. He wrote poems, too."