Abstract
Ramicelli discusses the formation of the Rio-Grandense Library collection of British fiction during the nineteenth century. By highlighting the importance of publishing houses, bookshops, and readers/Library members in this process, the author brings into focus economic and cultural agents of the transnational history of the formation of the collection held by this old private Brazilian library. The collection comprises nineteenth-century editions of fictional works produced by canonical and non-canonical writers in the Victorian period and in the period prior to the 1800s. Ramicelli concludes by considering how the complementary and connected series of activities carried out by those agents made British fiction available in a region far beyond the geographical boundaries of Rio de Janeiro, the capital and cultural centre of nineteenth-century Brazil.
Some passages of this text figure in two articles published in Brazil during the development of this research: “Desvendando o acervo oitocentista de ficção britânica da Biblioteca Rio-Grandense”, in: NUÑEZ, Carlinda Fragale Pate, et al. (eds). História da literatura: práticas analíticas. Rio de Janeiro, 2012, vol. 1, pp. 58–68; and “Ficção britânica em edição oitocentista no acervo da Biblioteca Rio-Grandense: a obra de Walter Scott e Charles Dickens”, in: VAZ, Artur Emílio Alarcon, and PÓVOAS, Mauro Nicola (eds). Literatura, história e fontes primárias. Curitiba, 2013, pp. 169–84.
This research was funded by a grant from Edital Universal/CNPq for the period 2012–13.
I would like to thank the following people who made important contributions to my work: research professors Antonio Dimas (USP), Nelson Schapochnik (USP), Mauro Nicola Póvoas (FURG), and Artur Emílio Alarcon Vaz (FURG); the members of library staff: Marco Antonio Maio da Cunha, Heloisa Helena Mancio Furtado, Simone Maria Dutra Grafulha, and Solange Santos Gallarraga. Finally, I am grateful to Madeleine Brook for proofreading this article.
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- 1.
England was the central point of the British world in the nineteenth century, when it was common to speak of English novels in a general sense, i.e. to call ‘English’ those novels produced in Great Britain. Nonetheless, I use the term British to refer to novels and fictional narratives written and published in British territory at this time.
- 2.
FREYRE, Gilberto. Ingleses no Brasil: aspectos da influência britânica sobre a vida, a paisagem e a cultura do Brasil. 2nd edn. Rio de Janeiro and Brasília, 1977, p. 200. My translation. (This book is translated into English under the title The English in Brazil: Aspects of British Influence on the Life, Landscape and Culture of Brazil. It was published by Boulevard in 2011.)
- 3.
The works referred to in this passage are the following: MEYER, Marlyse. “O que é ou quem foi Sinclair das Ilhas?”, in: Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 14 (1973), pp. 37–63. MEYER, Marlyse. “Mulheres romancistas inglesas do século XVIII e romance brasileiro”, in: Caminhos do Imaginário no Brasil. São Paulo, 1993, pp. 47–72. MEYER, Marlyse. “Voláteis e Versáteis: de Variedades e Folhetins se fez a Chronica”, in: As Mil Faces de um Herói Canalha e Outros Ensaios. Rio de Janeiro, 1998, pp. 109–96. VASCONCELOS, Sandra. “Leituras inglesas no Brasil oitocentista”, in: FONSECA, Maria Augusta (ed.). Olhares sobre o romance. São Paulo, 2005, pp. 255–87. VASCONCELOS, Sandra. “Formação do Romance Brasileiro: 1808–1860 (Vertentes Inglesas); Romances ingleses em circulação no Brasil durante o século XIX”, available at: http://www.caminhosdoromance.iel.unicamp.br. (accessed on 15 February 2015). VASCONCELOS, Sandra. “Cruzando o Atlântico: notas sobre a recepção de Walter Scott”, in: ABREU, Márcia (ed.). Trajetórias do romance. Circulação, leitura e escrita nos séculos XVIII e XIX. Campinas, 2008, pp. 351–74. VASCONCELOS, Sandra. “Figurações do passado: o romance histórico em Walter Scott e José de Alencar”, in: Terceira Margem. 18 (2008), pp. 15–37. SCHAPOCHNIK, Nelson. Os Jardins das Delícias: Gabinetes Literários, Bibliotecas e Figurações da Leitura na Corte Imperial. PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 1999. SCHAPOCHNIK, Nelson. “The Library that Disappeared: The Rio de Janeiro British Subscription Library”, in: SILVA, Ana Cláudia Suriani da, and VASCONCELOS, Sandra Guardini (eds). Books and Periodicals in Brazil, 1768–1930. A Transatlantic Perspective. London, 2014, pp. 87–117.
- 4.
The term ‘fiction’ is used here because both novels and short narratives (published in periodicals and/or collected in book form) were available in nineteenth-century Brazilian reading institutions.
- 5.
The Farroupilha Revolution took place between 1836 and 1845. It was the longest and bloodiest of the uprisings against the central government of Rio de Janeiro during the Regency, i.e. the interval between the reigns of Dom Pedro I and Dom Pedro II. The Farroupilha movement had political and economic motivations and a separatist purpose. In fact, the Farroupilha separatists managed to establish republicanism in the south of monarchic Brazil for a short period of time.
- 6.
BARRETO, Abeillard. “Uma instituição centenária”, in: ALVES, Francisco das Neves. Biblioteca Rio-Grandense: textos para o estudo de uma instituição a serviço da cultura. Rio Grande, 2005, p. 65. My translation. This article was originally published in the newspaper Correio do povo on 13 April 1946.
- 7.
FONTOURA, Edgar Braga. “A Biblioteca Rio-Grandense”, in: ALVES, Francisco das Neves. Biblioteca Rio-Grandense: textos para o estudo de uma instituição a serviço da cultura. Rio Grande, 2005, p. 51. My translation. This text was originally published by Oficinas de Rio Grande in 1933
- 8.
BARRETO, Abeillard. “Patrimônio cultural do Brasil”, in ALVES, Francisco das Neves. Biblioteca Rio-Grandense: textos para o estudo de uma instituição a serviço da cultura. Rio Grande, 2005, p. 73. My translation. This article was originally published in the newspaper Correio do povo on 26 April 1946.
- 9.
Catálogo dos Livros do Gabinete de Leitura da Cidade do Rio Grande de S.Pedro do Sul. Rio Grande, 1854. / Catálogo dos Livros do Gabinete de Leitura da Cidade do Rio Grande de S.Pedro do Sul. Rio Grande, 1877./Catálogo dos Livros da Biblioteca Rio-Grandense da cidade do Rio Grande de S. Pedro do Sul. Rio Grande, 1881./Catálogo da Biblioteca Rio-Grandense. Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, 1907.
- 10.
It is important to point out that this documentation does not intend to be exhaustive. The authorship of some works is still unknown and books may have been left out inadvertently due to book register errors in the catalogues, in the index cards, and in the digitised list.
- 11.
I use this term for printing houses that also functioned as publishing houses.
- 12.
The name of this section changed from one catalogue to the other: 1854 – section “Novelas”; 1877 – section “Novelas e romances”; 1881 – section “Novelas e romances” (in the supplement to this catalogue: section “Romances e novelas”); 1907 – two separate sections: “Romances” and “Novelas” (novels are found in both sections).
- 13.
The province of Rio Grande comprised towns founded by Germans and Italians. Rio Grande was founded by Portuguese immigrants from Azores.
- 14.
CUNHA, Jaqueline Rosa da. A formação do sistema literário de Pelotas: uma contribuição para a literatura do Rio Grande do Sul. DLitt thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Porto Alegre, 2009.
- 15.
Idem, Ibidem. p. 76. My translation.
- 16.
The bookshops mentioned here will be referred to below.
- 17.
Sandra Vasconcelos’s documentation is titled “Romances ingleses em circulação no Brasil durante o século XIX” and can be retrieved from the section “Cronologias – Ficção inglesa” at http://www.caminhosdoromance.iel.unicamp.br (accessed on 15 February 2015). Vasconcelos’s sources for the information she presents are the catalogues of nineteenth-century libraries, circulating libraries, and bookshops of Rio de Janeiro. Although not complete yet, this documentation is an important source about the British fiction that was incorporated into the Brazilian literary context in the nineteenth century.
- 18.
The intricate history of the translations of Persuasion has been studied by Sandra Vasconcelos and is the subject of Chapter 7.
- 19.
According to A. Gonçalves Rodrigues, this is the Portuguese translation of A Sicilian Romance (1790) from the French version titled Julia, ou les souterrains du chateau de Mazzini and published in 1793. See RODRIGUES, A. Gonçalves. A novelística estrangeira em versão portuguesa no período pré-romântico. Coimbra, 1951, p. 47.
- 20.
This 1856 Brazilian edition of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, who is acknowledged to be the precursor of gothic fiction in England, was printed at the publishing printing house of “Rio Grandense” de B.Berline. This publication erroneously indicates W. Esq. Marshall as the author of the novel.
- 21.
MEYER, Marlyse. “O que é ou quem foi Sinclair das Ilhas?”, in: Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 14 (1973), pp. 37–63. MEYER, Marlyse. “Sinclair das Ilhas ou os desterrados na ilha da Barra: uma tradução do francês ‘em língua vulgar’, publicada no Rio de Janeiro em 1825 por Silva Porto, um livreiro liberal”, in: DUTRA, Eliana de Freitas, and MOLLIER, Jean-Yves (eds). Política, nação e edição: o lugar dos impressos na construção da vida política no Brasil, Europa e Américas nos séculos VXIII–XX. São Paulo, 2006, pp. 467–79.
- 22.
DEVONSHIRE, M.G. “Intermediaries or Channels of Introduction: Publishers and Booksellers”, in: The English Novel in France, 1830–1870. New impression. New York, 1967, pp. 56–9.
- 23.
The information on Bernhard Tauchnitz was retrieved from http://www.tauchnitzeditions.com/ (accessed on 28 July 2014).
- 24.
MAGALHÃES, Mario Osório. Opulência e cultura na Província de São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul: um estudo sobre a história de Pelotas (1860–1890). Pelotas, 1993, p. 204 and pp. 255–6.
- 25.
Information on the Livraria Americana is provided by Jaqueline Rosa da Cunha in her doctoral thesis (CUNHA, Jaqueline Rosa da. A vida cultural e literária em Pelotas; O produtor, o mercado e o consumidor, in: A formação do sistema literário de Pelotas: uma contribuição para a literatura do Rio Grande do Sul. PhD thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Porto Alegre, 2009, esp. p. 63, p. 66, and p. 119).
- 26.
The information on the Albion Club was retrieved from the website: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_Club_Rio_Grande (accessed on 18 February 2015).
- 27.
VASCONCELOS, Sandra. “Romances ingleses em circulação no Brasil durante o século XIX”, available at: http://www.caminhosdoromance.iel.unicamp.br (accessed on 15 February 2015); SCHAPOCHNIK, Os Jardins das Delícias.
- 28.
MORETTI, Franco. “The Slaughterhouse of Literature”, in: Distant Reading. London, 2013, p. 66.
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Ramicelli, M.E. (2017). British Fiction in the Far South of Brazil: The Nineteenth-Century Collection of the Rio-Grandense Library. In: Abreu, M. (eds) The Transatlantic Circulation of Novels Between Europe and Brazil, 1789-1914. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46837-2_12
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