O Cortiço (Classicos Da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition)
Known as Brazil's first professional writer, Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo (1857-1913) was the talented son of a Portuguese diplomat. Azevedo enrolled in Brazil's National School of Fine Arts and drew charactures for the newspapers of the day. But his father's sudden death in 1878 forced him to support his mother and family through his writing. While his first works were formulaic works written to guarantee his family's survival, he soon turned to works that analyzed society, from the degrading conditions of the tenements to the exploitations of slavery. His best works are O Cortiço (1890), Casa de Pensão (1884) and O Mulato (1881). Despite gaining a fair living from 1882 through 1895 from his writing, he suddenly retired from writing novels in 1895 to begin a diplomatic career, rising to become Brazil's consul in Asuncion, Paraguay. He died at his last post, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1913.