What is the full birth name of the Brazilian author known as Machado de Assis?

The full birth name of Machado de Assis was Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. He was born in Rio de Janeiro on 21 June 1839, when Brazil was still the Empire of Brazil.

Machado de Assis became one of Brazil’s most important writers, producing novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and literary criticism. His best-known novels include “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas,” “Quincas Borba,” and “Dom Casmurro.” His sharp irony, unreliable narrators, and psychological insight made him a foundational figure in Brazilian realism.

His family background was modest. His father, Francisco José de Assis, was a wall painter and the son of freed slaves; his mother, Maria Leopoldina da Câmara Machado, was a Portuguese washerwoman from the Azores. Machado had limited formal schooling but educated himself through reading and developed a career in journalism and government service.

In 1897, he became the founding president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, an institution modeled partly on France’s Académie française. Readers sometimes shorten his name to “Machado,” but that is a literary name rather than his complete birth name. “Bruxo do Cosme Velho,” or “Wizard of Cosme Velho,” is a later nickname honoring his literary mastery.