C. P. (Constantine Petrou Photiades) Cavafy, the youngest of seven brothers, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where he spent most of his life working as a clerk at the Ministry of Public Works. His parents were natives of Constantinople and founding members of the Greek community of Alexandria. Cavafy published his first poem, ‘Bacchial’, in the Leipzig periodical Hesperus in 1886 and ever since opted for publishing privately or in newspapers and periodicals rather than in book form. His poetic oeuvre consists of 154 poems and was published posthumously in Alexandria in 1935 and in Athens in 1948. Further editions of his unpublished poems, prose and essays followed from the 1960s onwards.