Andreas Kalvos was born on the Venice-ruled Ionian island of Zakynthos (Zante) in 1792; he stayed in Italy from the age of 10 and did not visit his native island for 24 years; he died in England in 1869. His Corfiote father Giovanni Calbo served in the Venetian army; the family of his mother, Andriana Rucani, was listed in the Venetian nobility register, the Libro d’Oro. Kalvos himself signed his first poem in Greek, as well as his first collection of odes, as Andreas Kalvos Iōannides.

The poet reached the age of 20 at the end of the Napoleonic period, in 1812, when he became secretary to the Italian Romantic poet Ugo Foscolo (who was also born in Zante and had a Greek mother). The period during which Kalvos shared a house with Foscolo, at the beginning in Florence (1813) and later in Switzerland (Hottingen, 1816) and, finally, in London from September 1816 until the beginning of February 1817, provided lasting experiences and impressions.

Kalvos had written a poem on Napoleon in Italian in 1811 (Canzone a Napoleone), and followed this up with the Italian tragedies Teramene (1813) and Le Danaide (1815). In 1814 he translated from the Sicilian dialect into Italian poems from the collection Bucolica by Giovanni Meli (1740–1815). During the same year he composed the Ode agli Ioni, adding an introductory text denouncing his hymn to Napoleon. Other work in Italian (hymns, sonnets and other poems) is now lost. In Florence, he studied Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Alfieri and, to be sure, Foscolo; Rousseau became an important influence. But by 1814 his mind was turning to Greece.

During his first stay in London (1816-20), he gave private lessons in Italian, Greek and French, and became very close to Charles Miles Lambert Monck (1779–1867), Philhellene and Member of Parliament, whom he taught Greek. This is also the period when he must have started studying the poetry of Byron, to whom he was later to dedicate his ode The British Muse.

Even though he remained active among Italian émigrés, Greece won him over, as is shown by his correspondence with Philhellenes such as Monck and Lord Guilford (the future instigator of the Ionian Academy, established on Corfu in 1824). In 1818-19, Kalvos gave lectures on the Greek language, which were published in The Times, and prepared a short grammar and a dictionary of Modern Greek (for the two-volume compendium Harmonical grammar of the principal ancient and modern languages, 1822). He worked with the biblical publisher Samuel Bagster (1772–1851) on a Modern Greek translation of the Psalms for the Liturgia anglicana polyglotta (published in 1820).

In 1819, the year of his marriage and the death, shortly thereafter, of his bride, the poet published his first ode in Greek, Elpis Patridos (“The fatherland’s hope”), dedicated to Guilford and displaying the poet’s deep concern with style and metre. His odes – also those of 1824 (Lyra, Geneva) and 1826 (Lyrika, Paris; translated into French by his Philhellenic friend Guillaume Pauthier) – shows his concern for a proper, lyrical diction.

In September 1820, Kalvos returned to Florence to seek employment as a private tutor. He became actively involved with the Carbonari, was arrested and expelled from Tuscany in 1821. He lived in Geneva (where many Italian refugees and Carbonari were gathered) until the end of 1824, and engaged with the city’s Philhellenic movement to procure lodging for Greek refugees from Moldavia and Wallachia, becoming acquainted with Kapodistrias in the process. It was here also that he published his first collection of odes (1824), which were immediately translated into French by Stanislas Julien (1799–1873), friend of Adamantios Korais.

When the poet relocated to Paris, he continued his work in liberal and Philhellenic circles, maintained his correspondence with Guilford and kept up his literary production. Kalvos also wrote articles on the Italian poet Filippo Pananti (1766–1837) and on Nikolaos  Pikkolos’s (1792–1865) Greek translation of Paul et Virginie.

Both of his poetic collections, with their emphasis on national matters and the glorification of the revolution of 1821, were received positively, especially in Paris. Along with the poetry of Dionysios Solōmos they have become canonical landmarks.

In June 1826, Kalvos, having attracted the attention of the French police as well, left Paris for Greece, possibly as the envoy of the Parisian Philhellenic Committee. After a brief stay in Nafplio, he arrived in Corfu, capital of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, where he was to remain until 1852. After a stint of private tutoring (amongst his students was the poet Andreas Laskaratos, 1811–1901) he was appointed, on Guilford’s proposal, professor of literature in the newly-established Ionian Academy, where he was also to teach philosophy (1827, 1836-37, 1840-41). He also held a teaching post at Corfu’s Gymnasium (Collegio Ionio); among his students there was the poet Gerasimos Markoras (1826–1911). During this period, he wrote articles in Italian and in Greek and served as editor of the official periodical of the Reform Party, Patris (“Homeland”, 1849), which also carried contributions by Spyridōn Zambelios.

His 1853 marriage (to Charlotte Augusta Wadams, who came to Corfu to run the girls’ school) took Kalvos back to London. He did translations into Greek for the Bible Society and taught at the girls’ school. He and his wife took up residence in London and (in 1865) in Louth, Lincolnshire, where he died in 1869. His remains were transferred to Greece in March 1960.