Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was the greatest Portuguese poet of the last century, and is one of Europe's greatest poets too. When he died he left a trunk full of poetry, philosophical writings, criticism and other texts. There are 25,426 items in the archive, including those that constitute The Book of Disquietude (Carcanet, 1997).

Carcanet was the first English-language publisher of Fernando Pessoa in 1971. In 1997 Carcanet published Richard Zenith's translation of The Book of Disquietude.