Pedro Alexandre Cavroé

Poet and playwright. The son of a French cabinetmaker with a workshop in Largo do Calhariz, in Lisbon, he received a regular education, learning elementary notions of mathematics, drawing, and Latin and French grammar. An advocate of liberal doctrines, he was forced to emigrate to Rio de Janeiro (where he stood out as an architect) in 1828, following the absolutist coup d'état by D. Miguel. After the constitutional regime was restored, he returned from Brazil and was appointed Demonstrator at the Conservatory of Arts and Trades (1839). He was an editor for the newspapers Jornal de Bellas-Artes, ou Mnemosine Lusitana, published in Lisbon from 1816 to 1817, and Mnemosine Constitucional, a political newspaper published in Lisbon from 1820 to 1821. He has several sonnets printed in half and quarter sheets of paper and wrote plays (some original, others imitated or translated from French) that were performed in public theaters but never printed.