Poets

Henrique Maximiano Coelho Neto was a Brazilian writer and politician. He founded and occupied the second chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, from 1897 until his death in 1934. He was also the president of the aforementioned Academy in 1926.

Life

Coelho Neto was born in the city of Caxias, Maranhão on February 21, 1864. His father was Portuguese, but his mother was an indigenous woman, Ana Silvestre Coelho. At six years years of age, his parents moved to Rio de Janeiro. He began his education at the Externato of the Colegio Pedro II. He attempted medical school but soon gave up. In 1883 he enrolled at the University of São Paulo School of Law, living in the boarding house where also lived Raul Pompeia, who attended the Academy of São Paulo at that time. He soon found himself involved in a student movement against a professor. In anticipation of reprisals, he moved to the Law Faculty of Recife, where he completed the first year of law, having been a student of the jurist and poet Tobias Barreto. Returning to São Paulo, he devoted himself passionately to the abolitionist and Republican campaign, an attitude that led to new frictions with the University of São Paulo School of Law. In 1885 he finally abandoned his legal studies and moved to Rio de Janeiro. He became part of a group of bohemians that included figures such as Olavo Bilac, Luís Murat, Guimarães Passos and Francisco de Paula Ney. The history of this generation appears later in his novels A Conqui..