ANTÓNIO RAMOS ROSA nasceu em Faro, a 17 de Outubro de 1924. Foi militante do MUD (Movimento de União Democrática) e conheceu a prisão política. Trabalhou como tradutor e professor, tendo sido um dos directores de revistas literárias como Árvore e Cassiopeia. O seu primeiro livro de poesia, O Grito Claro, foi publicado em 1958. Além da sua vastíssima obra poética, com cerca de uma centena de títulos, escreveu livros de ensaios que marcaram sucessivas gerações de leitores de poesia, como Poesia, Liberdade Livre (1962) ou A Poesia Moderna e a Interrogação do Real (1979), traduziu muitos poetas e prosadores estrangeiros, sobretudo de língua francesa, e organizou uma importante antologia de poetas portugueses contemporâneos (a quarta e última série das Líricas Portuguesas). Era ainda um dotado desenhador. Junto a vários prémios internacionais o Prémio Sophia de Mello Breyner, em 2005, o Prémio Pessoa, em 1988, e o Grande Prémio de Poesia da APE, 1989. Foi nomeado para o Prémio Nobel da Literatura, em 1996. Faleceu a 23 de Setembro de 2013, aos 88 anos.

João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett e mais tarde 1.º Visconde de Almeida Garrett, (Porto, 4 de fevereiro de 1799 — Lisboa, 9 de dezembro de 1854) foi um escritor e dramaturgo romântico, orador, par do reino, ministro e secretário de estado honorário português. Grande impulsionador do teatro em Portugal, uma das maiores figuras do romantismo português, foi ele quem propôs a edificação do Teatro Nacional de D. Maria II e a criação do Conservatório de Arte Dramática. Tem uma biblioteca com o seu nome no Porto.

António Pereira Nobre (Porto August 16, 1867 – March 18, 1900) was a Portuguese poet. He died of tuberculosis in Foz do Douro, Porto, in 1900, after trying to recover in a number of places. His masterpiece Só (Paris, 1892), was the only book he published. His verse marked a departure from objective realism and social commitment to subjective lyricism and an aesthetic point of view. The lack of means aggravated by his father's death, made him morbidly reject the present and the future, following a pessimistic romantic attitude that led him to denounce his tedium. However excessive, this is a controlled attitude, due to a clear aesthetic mind and a real sense of ridicule. He learned the colloquial tone from Almeida Garrett and Júlio Dinis, and also from Jules Laforgue, but he exceeded them all in the peculiar compromise between irony and a refined puerility, a fountain of happiness because it represents a return to his happiest of times - a kingdom of his own from where he resuscitates characters and enchanted places, manipulating, as a virtuoso of nostalgia, the picturesque of popular festivals and of fishermen, the simple magic of toponyms and the language of the people. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B...

A heteronym of Fernando Pessoa. Alberto Caeiro was born in Lisbon, in 1889 and died in 1915, but lived most of his life in the country with an old great aunt because he was orphaned from a young age. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. He finished his primary school education and had no profession. How did this heteronym come about? Fernando Pessoa tells us "one day he decided to play a trick on Sá-Carneiro—so he drew up a bucolic poet, of the complicated kind and had them meet, I can’t remember how, in some sort of real context. I spent some days trying to formulate the poet but achieved nothing. One day, on the verge of giving up – March 8th 1914 – I approached a high chest of drawers and, began to write something down on a piece of paper, while standing, as I like to do, whenever possible. And so, taken over by some strange, indescribable kind of trance, I wrote 30 something poems in one stretch. That was the most triumphant day of my life and I will never experience another like it. I began with the title The Keeper of Flocks. And what followed was the birth of someone within me, whom I immediately named Alberto Caeiro. Please excuse the absurdity of the phrase: my master will appear within me. But that was my immediate sensation." When Fernando Pessoa writes as Caeiro, he claims to do so "in pure and unexpected inspiration, not knowing or guessing what he will write." Source: Fernando Pessoa’s Letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, January 1935, in Correspondência 1923-1935, ed. Manuela Parreira da Silva, Lisbon, Assírio & Alvim, 1999.

A heteronym of Fernando Pessoa. Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira on October 15th 1890 at 1.30 pm. He had a normal high school education; and was later sent to Scotland to study Engineering, first mechanical, then naval. A holiday trip to the East resulted in the Opiário. An uncle from the Beiras region of Portugal, who was a priest, taught him Latin. Vaguely Jewish-Portuguese, pale olive skin, straight hair, usually side parted, wore a monocle. In his letter, source for this text, to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, dated Janeiro 13th 1935, Fernando Pessoa writes on the birth of heteronomy as Campos, "when I felt a sudden impulse to write and didn’t know what of", he then adds "suddenly and moving in opposite direction to Ricardo Reis, a different character impetuously emerged. In a flash, at the typewriter, free of interruption or revision, Alvaro Campos' Triumphal Ode was born—the Ode of this name and the man of the man he was." A little further he clarifies: "When Orpheu was published, I needed something, at the last minute, to achieve the number of pages. Sá-Carneiro therefore suggested I wrote and "old" poem by Álvaro de Campos written before meeting Caeiro and being influenced by him. I therefore wrote Opiário, where I tried to apply all of Alvaro de Campos’ latent tendencies by which he would later come to be known for, but omitting any trace of contact from his master Caeiro. It was one of the hardest poems I have ever written, due to the double effort of depersonalization that I had to develop. But, oh well, I think it came out alright, a budding Álvaro…"

Bernardim Ribeiro was a Renaissance Portuguese poet and writer. His father, Damião Ribeiro, was implicated in the conspiracy against King John II of Portugal. His Livro das saudades, mostly known as Menina e moça (taken from its incipit) and translated as Maiden and Modest in English, is one of the finest examples of the genre of pastoral romance in Renaissance literature.

Notável prosador e o mais conhecido orador religioso português, o Padre António Vieira nasceu em 1608, em Lisboa, e faleceu na Baía em 1697. Aos seis anos vai para o Brasil com os pais e fixa-se na Baía. Em 1623 inicia o noviciado na Companhia de Jesus. Ordena-se sacerdote em 1635, exerce as funções de pregador nas aldeias baianas e começa a granjear notoriedade como pregador. Os primeiros sermões já reflectem as preocupações sócio-políticas de Vieira porquanto a colónia da Baía lutava contra as invasões dos holandeses. Em 1641, restaurada a independência, regressa a Portugal e cativa o favor de D. João IV. Por isso, inicia em 1646 missões diplomáticas na Europa. Volta ao Brasil em 1653, para o estado do Maranhão, depois de se envolver em questões relacionadas com a Companhia de Jesus. Aí toma um papel muito activo nos conflitos entre jesuítas e colonos, como paladino dos direitos humanos, a propósito da exploração dos indígenas. No ano seguinte prega o " Sermão de Santo António aos Peixes ". É expulso do Maranhão pelos colonos, em 1661, e regressa a Lisboa. Em 1665 é preso em Coimbra pelo Tribunal do Santo Ofício sob a acusação de acreditar nas profecias do poeta Bandarra. Três anos depois é amnistiado e retoma as pregações em Lisboa. Em 1669 parte para Roma e obtém grande sucesso como pregador, combatendo o Tribunal do Santo Ofício. Regressa a Portugal em 1675; mas, agora sem apoios políticos e desiludido pela perseguição aos cristãos-novos (que tanto defendera), retira-se de vez para a Baía em 1681 onde se entrega ao trabalho de compor e editar os seus Sermões. A sua prosa é vista como um modelo de estilo vigoroso e lógico, onde a construção frásica ultrapassa o mero virtuosismo barroco. A sua riqueza e propriedade verbais, os paradoxos e os efeitos persuasivos que ainda hoje exercem influência no leitor, a sedução dos seus raciocínios, o tom por vezes combativo, e ainda certas subtilezas irónicas, tornaram a arte de Vieira admirável.

Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araújo, a Portuguese novelist and historian. Born of humble stock, his grandfather was a foreman stonemason in the royal employ. Privation made him a man, and in his works, he proves a poet of deep and considerable power of expression. The stirring incidents in the political emancipation of Portugal inspired his muse, and he describes the bitterness of exile, the adventurous expedition to Terceira, the heroic defense of Oporto, and the final combats of liberty. In 1837 he founded the Panorama in imitation of the English Penny Magazine, and there and in Illustraco he published the historical tales which were afterwards collected into Lendas e Narratives; in the same year he became royal librarian at the Ajuda Palace, which enabled him to continue his studies of the past. The Panorama had a large circulation and influence, and Herculano's biographical sketches of great men and his articles of literary and historical criticism did much to educate the middle class by acquainting them with the story of their nation, and with the progress of knowledge and the state of letters in foreign countries. Grave as most of his writings are, they include a short description of a crossing from Jersey to Granville, in which he satirizes English character and customs, and reveals an unexpected sense of humour. A rare capacity for tedious work, a dour Catonian rectitude, a passion for truth, pride, irritability at criticism and independence of character, are the marks of Herculano as a man. He could be broken but never bent, and his rude frankness accorded with his hard, sombre face, and alienated mens sympathiea though it did not lose him their respect. His lyrism is vigorous, feeling, austere and almost entirely subjective and personal, while his pamphlets are distinguished by energy of conviction, strength of affirmation, and contempt, for weaker and more ignorant opponents. His History of Portugal is a great but incomplete monument. A lack of imagination and of the philosophic spirit prevented him from penetrating or drawing characters, but his analytical gift, joined to persevering toil and honesty of purpose enabled him to present a faithful account of ascertained facts and a satisfactory and lucid explanation of political and economic events. His remains lie in a majestic tomb in the Jerónimos Monastery at Belem, near Lisbon, which was raised by public subscription to the greatest modern historian of Portugal and of the Peninsula. His more important works have gone through many editions and his name is still one to conjure with.

The Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade, pseudonym of José Fontinhas, is revered as one of the leading names in contemporary Portuguese poetry. His poetry is most striking for the depth of his short poems. One of Eugénio de Andrade's most known poems is his Poem to Mother. In 2001, he received the Portuguese award Prémio Camões.