Fernando Pessoa

Born in Lisbon in 1888, Fernando Pessoa spent much of his childhood in Durban, South Africa, after his mother remarried. He was educated in English there, and that bilingual upbringing shaped his writing for the rest of his life.

Back in Lisbon, he worked mainly as a translator and correspondence clerk while building one of the most unusual bodies of work in modern literature. He became famous for writing not only as himself but through distinct literary identities, or heteronyms, including Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos, each with a different voice and temperament.

Pessoa published relatively little in book form during his lifetime, with Mensagem appearing in 1934, the year before his death in 1935. Much of his writing was found after he died, and his reputation grew steadily until he came to be seen as one of the defining figures of Portuguese literature and a major poet of the 20th century.