Soares (Dona Laura Veridiana de Castro e Almeida)
Original title: Soares (D. Laura Veridiana de Castro e Almeida)
Biographical note on Laura Veridiana de Castro e Almeida Soares, a Funchal-born woman of letters (b. 1870) who published a book on Madeira under a pseudonym and translated Hall Caine.
She is married to Feliciano Soares, a well-known man of letters from mainland Portugal, and was born in Funchal on 7 November 1870, the daughter of Dom Francisco de Castro e Almeida Pimentel de Sequeira e Abreu and Dona Maria Antónia de Bettencourt Pestana de Castro.
Under the pseudonym Dona Maria Francisca Teresa she published a book entitled Em casa da avó – Na Ilha da Madeira (Lisbon, 1923), and translated Hall Caine’s The Eternal City and The Apostle from English as A Cidade Eterna and O Apóstolo.
From her earliest years she showed a decided vocation for study, and she is one of the Madeiran women who have most distinguished themselves in the cultivation of letters.