Jose de Alencar

José de Alencar was a Brazilian writer, journalist and politician who is considered one of the most important literary figures of the 19th century. He wrote novels, short stories, essays, and journalism, exploring themes of identity, language, time, and solitude. He was born to a wealthy family in Fortaleza, Ceará, in 1829, and moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1850, where he graduated in law and started his literary career. He published his first work, Fantoches, in 1852, with a sequence of short stories, mostly in the form of short plays. The following year, he saw his first great success with the novel O Guarani, which was later adapted into an opera by Antônio Carlos Gomes. He wrote under the pen name Erasmo, and was a major exponent of the literary tradition known as Indianism, which focused on the indigenous peoples and culture of Brazil. He also wrote historical, regionalist and urban novels, such as As Minas de Prata, O Gaúcho, and Lucíola. He was a political activist and a member of the Conservative Party, and served as a deputy, a senator, and a minister of justice. He was also a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the Historical and Geographical Institute of Brazil. He died of tuberculosis in 1877, at the age of 48. He is widely regarded as a master of the Portuguese language and a pioneer of modernist literature in Brazil.