Today, the effects of this Pessoa anthology, albeit incalculable, are there for all to see; that said, the expansive clearing that they opened in the Portuguese poetic consciousness had yet to appear before 1942, though they were already at large in the work and imagination of Casais Monteiro, indelibly marking his work as the first complete reflection on the most significant poetic appropriation of the 20th century Portuguese world. Eduardo Lourenço Poesia.
First Anthology offers English-language readers a bilingual edition of the first anthology that was made of Fernando Pessoa’s poetic work. Edited and introduced by Adolfo Casais Monteiro in the 1940s, it comprises a fine selection of poems as well as several prose texts, including the letter Pessoa addressed to Casais Monteiro explaining the origin of his heteronyms. This edition includes a preface by George Monteiro and an essay by Eduardo Lourenço.