Florbela Espanca

Florbela Espanca was born in Vila Viçosa on 8 December 1894, the daughter of a servant and of a father who acknowledged her only nineteen years after her death; she was raised in his household and lost her mother at thirteen. Married for the first time at nineteen, she completed her secondary studies in Évora and in 1917 entered the faculty of law in Lisbon, a rare thing for a woman of her time. She married three times, also wrote tales and translated. The death of her brother, an aviator, in a seaplane accident struck her hard; she took her own life in Matosinhos on 8 December 1930, on her thirty-sixth birthday.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryBook of SorrowsLivro de MágoasFlorbela Espanca · 1919Literature