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Fernando Pessoa Facts

Fernando Pessoa Facts
Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese writer best known as one of the 20th century's greatest literary figures and Portuguese poets. He was born on June 13th, 1888 in Lisbon, Portugal to Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa and Maria Magdalena Pinheiro Nogueira. Fernando's father died when he was five and his younger brother died when he was only one. His mother remarried and they moved to South Africa where his stepfather was stationed in the military. While attending school he studied English literature and in 1903, at the age of 15, he won the Queen Victoria memorial Prize for an English paper. He returned to Portugal in 1905, attended the University of Lisbon briefly, and worked as a translator among other jobs before focusing his efforts on writing.
Interesting Fernando Pessoa Facts:
When Fernando Pessoa's grandmother died she left him some money. He used the money to start his own publishing company Empreza Ibis, but he closed it down due to financial trouble.
Fernando Pessoa wrote under many different names. His three most famous were Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis.
In total during his career Fernando Pessoa used more than seventy eight different names to publish his work.
Fernando Pessoa didn't just write under different names. Each name had its own style, history, and personality.
Fernando Pessoa called his additional pen names heteronyms instead of pseudonyms. His first heteronym was Chevalier de Pas, whom he created when he was only six years old.
Fernando Pessoa's first poem was published in 1914.
In 1915 Fernando and several other poets and artists established the magazine Orpheu, a literary publication. It only had two issues before it closed down due to financial trouble.
Fernando Pessoa's first book was published in 1918. It was an English language poetry collection titled Antinous. He followed this with two more English poetry collections titled 35 Sonnets (1918), and English Poems (1921).
Fernando Pessoa's only Portuguese poetry collection published during his lifetime was Mensagem, in 1933.
Fernando Pessoa died on November 30th, 1935. He was only 47. He had cirrhosis of the liver.
After his death publishers discovered that Fernando had 25,000 pages of typed manuscripts that he had written but had not published.
It wasn't until after his death that Fernando's work gained the acclaim it deserved and was widely published.
Harold Bloom, a critic with The Western Canon, described Fernando Pessoa as one of the 26 writers that established western literature's parameters.
Works written by Fernando Pessoa that were edited and published after his death include Fernando Pessoa's modernity without frontiers (2013), Forever Someone Else (2010), Collected Poems of Alvaro de Campos (2009), Lisbon: What the Tourist Should See (2008), The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro (2007), Message (2007), A Centenary Pessoa (2006), A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe (2006), Always Astonished: selected prose (1988), and The Transformation Book (2014), among many others.
Fernando Pessoa's most notable works include The Book of Disquiet and Message.
In addition to winning the Queen Victoria Prize in 1903 when he was only 15, Fernando Pessoa also won the 1934 Antero de Quental Award.


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