Heliodora Carneiro de Mendonça (August 29, 1923 – April 10, 2015[1]), better known by her pseudonym Bárbara Heliodora, was a Brazilian theatre critic, writer and translator, specialized in the works of William Shakespeare.

[2] From 1964 to 1967, she left criticism to work as director of the National Theater Service (SNT).

Later, she turned solely to teaching as a professor of theater history at the National Theater Conservatory and, later, as a full professor of the same subject at the Center for Letters and Arts at Uni-Rio, a position she held until her retirement in 1985.

Later, she also taught postgraduate courses at the University of São Paulo (USP), where in 1975 she defended her doctoral thesis entitled "The Dramatic Expression of the Political Man in Shakespeare", which was later transformed into a book.

In 1986, she returned to journalistic criticism at Visão magazine, later moving on to newspapers such as O Globo, where she established herself.