C.P. Cavafy

(1863 - 1933)

C.P. Cavafy worked in the irrigation service of the Egyptian ministry of public works in Alexandria from 1892 to 1922. He published only a few of his poems in literary journals, instead preferring to print pamphlets of them at his own expense to distribute among friends. E.M. Forster, a friend and early admirer of his poetry, wrote that he only ever saw Cavafy “going either from his flat to the office or from his office to the flat.” Cavafy died on his seventieth birthday in 1933.