author
Xavier da Cunha
1840–1920
A Portuguese doctor, poet, and bibliographer, he moved easily between medicine and literature. He is especially remembered for leading Lisbon’s National Library in the early 1900s and for a body of writing that ranged from poetry to bibliographic studies.
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About the author
Born in Évora on February 14, 1840, and died in Lisbon on January 11, 1920, Xavier da Cunha was a Portuguese physician and man of letters. He trained at the Escola Médico-Cirúrgica and built a career that joined medicine with a deep interest in books, scholarship, and public culture.
He wrote as a poet, author, and bibliographer, and also contributed to the press. Part of his work appeared under the pseudonym Olímpio de Freitas, a detail that hints at the breadth of his literary life.
Xavier da Cunha is particularly notable for serving as director of the National Library of Lisbon from 1902 to 1911. That role placed him at the center of Portuguese literary and bibliographic life, and it helps explain why his name still appears both in the history of Portuguese letters and in the history of libraries.