Machado de Assis
1839–1908
Biography
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839 into a poor family, and he rose from a childhood with little formal schooling to become the most admired writer in Brazil. He never went to university. He taught himself several foreign languages, including French, English, German and Greek, and he earned his living through journalism and a long career in the government civil service in Rio, where he died in 1908.
His work helped to shape Brazilian realism. He wrote novels, short stories, poems and plays, and his prose is known for its wit and its cool, sceptical view of Rio's society, of marriage, vanity and money. Several of his narrators cannot be fully trusted, which turns his books into puzzles for the reader. The best known are Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, narrated by a man who has already died, and Dom Casmurro, published in 1899. In 1897 he founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters and became its first president.
Three of his books are on this site. A Mão e a Luva (The Hand and the Glove) is an early romance in which a young woman must choose between two suitors. Esaú e Jacó is a later novel about twin brothers whose rivalry runs through their adult lives and through the political change that ended the monarchy. Dom Casmurro is the most widely read of the three: its narrator insists that his wife betrayed him, and the novel leaves the reader to weigh that claim.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
A Mão e a Luva
by Machado de Assis
A young orphan, Guiomar, is raised in the house of her rich godmother in Rio de Janeiro and soon has three suitors of very different temper, each of whom thinks he is the one she should choose. Machado de Assis's second novel is a quiet comedy of calculation and feeling in which…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Dom Casmurro
by Machado de Assis
Dom Casmurro is an 1899 novel written by Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Like The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and Quincas Borba, both by Machado de Assis, it is widely regarded as a masterpiece of realist literature. It is written as a fictional memoir by a…
Summary from Wikipedia: Dom Casmurro (CC BY-SA 4.0)Esau e Jacob
by Machado de Assis
Esau and Jacob is a Machado de Assis novel launched in 1904, four years before his death, by Editora Garnier, and, according to most critics, in full literary heyday, after writing, in 1899, Dom Casmurro, the most famous from his books. Esaú e Jacó stand out for consolidating a…
Summary from Wikipedia: Esau and Jacob (novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)Helena
by Machado de Assis
When the wealthy Counsellor Vale dies, his will acknowledges a natural daughter, Helena, and asks his family to take her in. She comes to live with his son Estácio and his sister, wins over the whole household, and keeps a secret of her own.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Historias Sem Data
by Machado de Assis
Machado de Assis's 1884 collection, whose title says its stories belong to no particular date. Ironic and sharply observed, they range from a parable about the devil founding his own church to tales of vanity, love and money in Rio. This book uses the racial and other slurs of…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Iaiá Garcia
by Machado de Assis
In Rio de Janeiro in the 1860s a modest civil servant, Luís Garcia, his wife Estela and his young daughter Iaiá live close to the grand household of the widow Valéria, whose son Jorge is about to go off to the war with Paraguay. Machado de Assis follows the two families as…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Memorias Posthumas de Braz Cubas
by Machado de Assis
Brás Cubas, a wealthy man of no great achievement, writes his memoirs from beyond the grave, beginning with his own funeral. In short, playful chapters he recalls his indulged childhood, his loves and his failed ambitions, with an irony that spares no one, least of all himself.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Papeis Avulsos
by Machado de Assis
Machado de Assis's 1882 collection, which opens with O Alienista, in which a doctor founds an asylum in a small town and begins locking up more and more of its people. The other stories are ironic tales of vanity, ambition and human nature.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Quincas Borba
by Machado de Assis
Quincas Borba is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. It was first published in 1891. It is also known in English as Philosopher or Dog? The novel was principally written as a serial in the journal A Estação from 1886 to 1891. It was definitively published…
Summary from Wikipedia: Quincas Borba (CC BY-SA 4.0)Reliquias de Casa Velha
by Machado de Assis
Machado de Assis's last collection, from 1906, gathering late stories along with two short comedies and some critical pages. Among the stories is Pai contra Mãe, about a slave catcher in Rio de Janeiro.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Ressurreição
by Machado de Assis
Ressurreição (Resurrection) is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis' first novel. It was published in 1872. Although it can be considered a romantic work, its romanticism is contained, moderate, without the sentimental excesses, the twists in the plot and the happy endings of the…
Summary from Wikipedia: Ressurreição (CC BY-SA 4.0)