Florbela Espanca

Florbela Espanca (; born , ) was a Portuguese poet.

Early life

Born Flor Bela d'Alma da Conceição on 8 December 1894 in Vila Viçosa, Portugal, Espanca was the daughter of Antónia da Conceição Lobo who worked as a housemaid for Espanca's father, João Maria Espanca, a photographer and businessman. Her father's wife, Mariana do Carmo Inglesa Espanca, who was unable to have her own children, agreed for Espanca to live in their home, where she was raised from birth by both her father's wife and her biological mother, who was 15 years old when Espanca was born. Since her parents weren't married, when Espanca was baptized on 20 June 1895, she was christened as Flor Bela Lobo, the daughter of Antónia Lobo and an unknown father.

She was remarried in 1922 to António Guimarães. Espanca had another miscarriage in 1923 and Guimarães filed for divorce a few months later. Livro de Soror Saudade (Sister Saudade's Book) was published the same year. In 1925 she was married for a third time to Mário Lage, a doctor who had treated her for a long time. In the sonnet, "Amar" (Love), which was published in her last book, Charneca em Flor (Heath in Bloom), Espanca expressed a "consuming desire to satisfy her need to love freely as a woman and her inability to channel that love into a socially acceptable, exclusive, monogamous mode," which according to Thomas Braga, was a revolutionary statement for Portuguese love sonnets.

Death and posthumous publications Espanca died by suicide on 8 December 1930, her 36th birthday, from an overdose of barbiturates. Charneca em Flor was published a month later in January 1931.