Maria Archer
Maria Emilia Archer Eyrolles Baltasar Moreira, known to her readers as Maria Archer, was a writer and activist from Lisbon, Portugal.
Biography
Early life
Born in Lisbon, Archer lived most of her life outside of Portugal. As a result of her parents' frequent journeys with their children, she did not finish elementary school until she was much older than normal students making her essentially a self-taught writer. Reportedly, she started creating verse as a young child although no evidence of those poems remain.In 1910, her parents moved the family to Mozambique, Africa. She was the first-born of six children. The family returned to Portugal in 1914, but two years later they were back in Africa, this time in Guinea-Bissau.
In 1921, while her father was on a trip to Portugal, Maria Archer married a Portuguese man, Alberto Teixeira Passos and the young couple took up residence on the island of Ibo in Mozambique. Five years later, after the fall of the democratic regime there and the subsequent crisis, her husband lost his job at a bank and the two moved to Faro, Portugal. In 1931, the marriage ended and they divorced.
Writings
As a single woman, she returned to Africa to live with her parents in Luanda, Angola, where she began her literary career in earnest. She started attending writing conferences and her first published work appeared in magazines.She called her first book, Três Mulheres , a soap opera, which was published in the same volume that contained a police adventure story by António Pinto Quartin, A Lenda e o Ação do Estranho Caso de Pauling.
She returned to Lisbon, where she began a period of intense writing activity, producing works describing her experience in Africa. In 1945, she also became an activist, joining the group called Movement of Democratic Unity, consisting of those opposed to the repressive regime of President Salazar in Portugal.
After she gained recognition as an activist, she began having problems with the political police. Her works were censored and her novel Casa Sem Pão was seized. According to the writer Dina Botelho,
"She closely followed the trial of the challenger of the Salazar dictatorship, Captain Henrique Carlos Galvão at the Military Court of Santa Clara. Having proposed to write a book about it, she saw her home invaded by the International Police and State Defense shortly after the end of the trial in 1953. She did eventually publish it in 1959, in Brazil, under the title The Last Days of Portuguese Fascism".Unable to make money from her writings in Portugal, she left for Brazil, on 5 July 1955 and arrived ten days later.
Exiled
While in Brazil, she "lived poor and sick," but she still wrote for some newspapers there, collaborating with O Estado de S. Paulo, Semana Portuguesa and Portugal Democrático and Revista Municipal de Lisboa. Her themes included both African-subjects as well as works opposing the Portuguese dictatorship. She also collaborated with Brazilian magazines such as, Portugal Colonial as well as the Portuguese-Brazilian magazine Atlântico: revista luso-brasileira.During her years in self-imposed exile, she is said to have completed five books and published them in Brazil, but records of only four exist.
Later years
By the end of her writing career, Archer had produced more than 30 works ranging over many different genres including a children's adventure novel, novels for adults and plays. Some of her work was republished in multiple editions.Finally, in 1979, she returned to Lisbon for the last time, moving into a long-term residential care facility called Manor of Santa Maria de Marvila on 26 April. There she spent the last three years of life. She died in 1982 at 83 years of age.