Vicente Machado de Faria e Maia

Azorean novelist, who graduated in Law from the University of Coimbra in 1860, then traveled through Spain, England, and France, and by 1861 was back in São Miguel, where he was appointed, that same year, secretary-general of the Civil Government of Ponta Delgada, a position he held for many years. He was also an administrative auditor for the same district. A friend of Antero since adolescence and his contemporary in Coimbra (though more advanced in his studies), he did not, however, adhere to the revolutionary ideas that were then stirring the Coimbra student environment – of which the poet of Odes Modernas was to become the herald – remaining, instead, a traditionalist and, in literature, a romantic. He wrote two novels: Beatriz, Coimbra, 1900, with a «Carta biográfica sobre o autor» by Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, and Cavaleiros d' África, 2 vols., Ponta Delgada, 1879, both first published, respectively, in Panorama, in 1867, and in Diário Popular, in serial form, in 1878; and two historical narratives: Vida da Princesa D. Joana, also published in Panorama, and O Vice-Rei D. Luís de Ataíde (unpublished). The novels deal with material drawn from Azorean history, whether the romantic 18th-century episode that forms the plot of the first, or, in the second, the chivalrous actions of the 16th-century island nobility in the wars in Africa. He also dedicated himself to matters of jurisprudence and economics, with a notable study in this genre on A Propriedade Literária, Ponta Delgada, 1880, with a preface by Camilo Castelo Branco (1ª. ed. no Instituto, Coimbra, 1865), and Os Bancos e a Circulação Fiduciária, Ponta Delgada, 1887.