José Martiniano de Alencar was born in what is today the bairro of Messejana in May 1, 1829, to priest (and later senator) José Martiniano Pereira de Alencar and his cousin Ana Josefina de Alencar. Moving to São Paulo in 1844, he graduated in Law at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1850 and starts to follow his lawyer career at Rio de Janeiro. Invited by his friend Francisco Otaviano, he becomes a collaborator for journal Correio Mercantil. He also wrote for the Diário do Rio de Janeiro and the Jornal do Commercio.

It was in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, during the year of 1856, that Alencar gained notoriety, writing the Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios, under the pseudonym Ig. In those, he criticized the homonymous poem by Gonçalves de Magalhães. Also in 1856, he wrote and published under feuilleton form his first romance: Cinco Minutos.

He was a personal friend of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Coincidentally, Alencar is the patron of the chair Assis occupied.

He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1877, a victim of tuberculosis.

Novels

• Cinco Minutos (1856)
• A Viuvinha (1857)
• The Guarani (1857)
• Lucíola (1862)
• Diva (1864)
• Iracema (1865)
• As Minas de Prata (1865 ... 1866)
• O Gaúcho (1870)
• A Pata da Gazela (1870)
• O Tronco do Ipê (1871)
• A Guerra dos Mascates (1871 ... 1873)
• Til (1871)
• Sonhos d'Ouro (1872)
• Alfarrábios (1873)
• Ubirajara (1874)
• O Sertanejo (1875)
• Senhora (1875)
• Encarnação (1893 ... posthumous)

Theatre plays

• O Crédito (1857)
• Verso e Reverso (1857)
• O Demônio Familiar (1857)
• As Asas de um Anjo (1858)
• Mãe (1860)
• A Expiação (1867)
• O Jesuíta (1875)

Chronicles

• Ao Correr da Pena (1874)

Autobiography

• Como e Por Que sou Romancista (1873)

Critics and polemics

• Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios (1856)
• Cartas Políticas de Erasmo (1865 ... 1866)
• O Sistema Representativo (1866)