Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863 and died there on the morning of his 70th birthday in 1933. He worked as an employee in the Irrigation Service at the Ministry of Public Works in Alexandria and was a leading figure in the literary life of the city. Surprisingly, he chose not to publish any collected edition of his poems during his lifetime, but preferred to circulate small privately printed collections among his…
Continue readingAntonis Samarakis was born in Athens in 1919. For decades he worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour, temporarily resigning during the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (1936-40), and during the Second World War he was captured by Nazis and narrowly escaped a death sentence. He published his first collection of short stories, Hope Wanted, in 1954, and his collection I Refuse won the Greek State Prize for the Short Story. Samarakis has…
Continue readingAndreas Laskaratos was born in Lixouri, on the Greek island of Cephalonia, in 1811, at a time when the Ionian Islands were under British rule. Brought up in a wealthy aristocratic family of land-owners, he studied law in Paris and Pisa, but only worked as a lawyer for four years. He published poetry and prose but became more well known as a satirist — his satiric caricatures and parodies are considered unique in modern Greek…
Continue readingAlexandros Rizos Rangavis (1809–1892) was a Greek man of letters, poet and statesman. Born in Constantinople in 1809 to a Greek Phanariot family, he was raised in Bucharest and Odessa, and attended military school in Munich. Following his return to Greece, Rangavis served at the Ministry of Education, helped organize the founding of the first university of modern Greece in 1834 and was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1856. Rangavis is the author of…
Continue readingAlexandros Papadiamandis (1851–1911) was born and grew up on the Aegean island of Skiathos, where he also spent the last years of his life. Though his thoughts were ever on Skiathos and its inhabitants, he lived most of his adult life in Athens and earned a basic living by translating foreign authors and writing his own stories for newspapers and periodicals. His simple, reclusive and pious life earned him the title of ‘kosmokalόyeros’ (lay monk).…
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