Machado de Assis

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born in 1839 in Rio de Janeiro to a mixed-race family of modest means. His father was a house painter of Afro-Brazilian descent, and his mother, who died when he was young, was a Portuguese immigrant from the Azores. Largely self-educated, Machado worked as a typesetter's apprentice and journalist before establishing himself as a writer of poetry, short stories, novels, and plays. He rose to become the most important literary figure in Brazil, co-founding and serving as the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1897. This author hub collects 1 work in the Canon Compass ranking, led by The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.