Luís Guimarães Filho (1878-1940) was a Brazilian diplomat, poet, columnist. He was born in Rio de Janeiro in October 1878 to a distinguished family. His father was Luís Guimarães, a lyric poet who was also a diplomat in Lisbon, and founder of chair no. 31 at the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His mother Cecília Canongia Guimarães died at the age of 28. Young Luís was handed over, along with his two sisters and brother Horácio, to the care of his maternal grandmother, who resided in Portugal, while his father continued his diplomatic life.

Guimaraes Filho studied at the University of Coimbra, where he received a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1895. Following the example of his father, he entered the diplomatic career. In September 1901, he was named secretary of the Pan American Congress of Mexico. In 1902 he was named, by competition, second secretary of the legation in Buenos Aires. He was also second secretary of the legation in Montevideo, Tokyo and Beijing; legation counselor in Havana and Bern; chargé d'affaires in Tokyo, Beijing, Havana and Bern; minister plenipotentiary in Caracas, Saint Petersburg, Montevideo and The Hague. Promoted to ambassador, he held posts in Madrid and Vatican City.

He wrote regularly in the press, especially in Gazeta de Notícias and Correio da Manhã. With his first book of poetry, Versos íntimos, published in 1894, he showed himself to be a talented lyricist in the Parnassian tradition of Brazilian poetry. He confirmed it further in later works; his Pedras preciosas (1906) is considered his finest work as a poet, and was translated into Italian in 1923. His book of tales Samurais e mandarins, published in 1912, also achieved great literary success.

His last work was a biographical essay on Fra Angelico, in which he reconstructed the life of the great Renaissance artist and his historical period. Guimaraes Filho's strong religiosity manifests itself in many of his poems and, above all, in hs study of Santa Teresinha, which he wrote for Correio da Manhã and later included in the book Holanda, impressões e viagens.

He was a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, the Royal Spanish Academy and several Brazilian and Portuguese cultural associations. He was the second occupant of seat 24 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, to which he was elected on May 17, 1917, succeeding Garcia Redondo. He was received by academic Paulo Barreto (João do Rio) on July 19, 1917.

He died in Petrópolis on April 19, 1940.