Turned away from the hermetic esthetic principles of post-symbolism and cultivated the dynamic openness of social realism.

Antipathetic, softly sorrowful tone that can be felt even when he describes real things or common themes of the time, for example abandoned gardens, old parks or fountains: places which he approaches via memory or dreams.

Introspective poetry of his first period, lyricising the beauty of countryside. Some poems projected Castilian archetypes that evoked emotions like pathos ("La mujer manchega", "The Manchegan Woman"), revulsion ("Un criminal"), and stark rapture ("Campos de Soria").

Like such French æsthetes as Verlaine, Machado began with a fin de siècle contemplation of his sensory world, portraying it through memory and the impressions of his private consciousness. And like his socially conscious colleagues of the Generation of 1898, he emerged from his solitude to contemplate Spain's historical landscape with a sympathetic yet unindulgent eye.

One of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98.

Born in Palacio de las Duenas, near Seville, Spain, the young Machado moved with his family to Madrid, where his father had obtained a professorship. When his father’s sudden death in 1893 left the family without financial support, Machado and his brother Manuel Machado turned to writing and acting to support themselves. In 1899, the brothers traveled to Paris, where they found work as translators. Around this time, Machado’s growing reputation as a poet led to teaching posts in various cities in Spain.In 1903, Machado published his first book of poems, entitled Soledades , which was a study on modernist character.  This was followed in 1912 with the publication of Campos de Castilla, a poetic consideration of a humanized Castilian landscape.

He married Leonor Izquierdo, who died in 1912.  He also went on to resume the education his father’s death had interrupted, obtaining a degree from the University of Madrid in 1918. During the last decade of his life, Machado once again became involved with the theater, collaborating with his brother on a number of successful plays. He was in Madrid at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which compelled him to write political poems. The violence finally forced him to flee Madrid, and he died an exile in France in February of 1939.

Among his volumes of poetry available in English translation are Times, Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (1983), The Castillian Camp (1982), and Roads Dreamed Clear Afternoons: An Anthology of the Poetry of Antonio Machado (1994). 

bibliography information from www.ctv.es/USERS/carrion/amachado.html