Constantine Cavafy, son of Georgakis Fotiadis, or C.P. Cavafy, was born on April 29, 1863, in Alexandria, where his parents settled after leaving Constantinople in 1840.

After the death of his father in 1870, the family moved to England, where they remained until 1876. They then returned to Alexandria but had to leave again before five years had passed due to a nationalist military movement.

They moved to Constantinople to his grandfather's house. There he stayed for about three years and then returned to Alexandria. He worked as a broker from 1894 to 1902. At the age of 26, he became a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works, where he remained until March 1932.

In 1932, he began to feel discomfort in his larynx, and in June, doctors in Alexandria diagnosed him with cancer, an illness from which he died a few months later.

The first poem he published was `Bacchic`, in the magazine Esperos of Leipzig. He did not publish any poetry collection while he was alive, as he chose to publish his poems in newspapers, magazines, and calendars or to print them himself on single sheets.

This book presents the 154 poems published by Cavafy himself, the 75 unpublished poems found in his archive or in the hands of his friends, and 27 poems that, although published by Cavafy, he later disavowed.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]