Abstract
The Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro published two catalogues of novels between 1858 and 1868, which attest to the circulation of fiction between Europe and Brazil and the formation of a transnational literary taste. In these catalogues, at a moment in time when the prevailing literary taste appears to be centred on the French feuilleton and its principal representatives, Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas, the Gothic novels by Ann Radcliffe stand out. Paixão’s chapter focuses on two issues: first, how the novels and their translations arrived in the Portuguese Subscription Library; and, second, what significance the co-existence in the library’s catalogues of novels that were produced in very different times has for understanding contemporary readers’ preferences.
This research was supported by FAPESP/FAEPEX-PAPDIC (2014–2016).
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Notes
- 1.
On the feuilleton, see Meyer, Marlyse. Folhetim: uma história. São Paulo, 1996, and THÉRENTY, Marie-Ève. Mosaïques: Être écrivain entre presse et roman (1829–1836). Paris, 2003.
- 2.
‘Literary capital’ should be understood as a place where there is circulation and ‘literary consumption’. On ‘literary capital’, see ESPAGNE, Michel. “Les Capitales littéraires allemandes”, in: Capitales culturelles, capitales symboliques: Paris et les expériences européennes XVIII e -XIX e siècles, ed. by CHARLE, Christophe, and ROCHE, Daniel. Paris, 2002, p. 333. On the term ‘literary consumption’, see ESCARPIT, Robert. Que sais-je? Le point des connaissances actuelles – Sociologie de la littérature. Paris, 1958, pp. 117–19.
- 3.
See ESPAGNE, Michel. “Le transferts culturels triangulaires”, in: Les transferts culturels franco-allemands. Paris, 1999.
- 4.
The summary is by 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, p. 43.
- 5.
On subscription libraries in other locations of Brazil, see RAMICELLI, Maria Eulália. “British fiction in the far south of Brazil: the nineteenth-century collection of the Rio-Grandese Library”, and AUGUSTI, Valéria. “Collections of French novels on the Atlantic route”, both in this volume.
- 6.
Almanak Laemmert is considered the first almanack published in Brazil. It was edited in Rio de Janeiro by the brothers Eduard and Heinrich Laemmert, who were present throughout the Second Reign until the beginning of the Republic. On this, see EL FAR, Alessandra. O livro e a leitura no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 2006, pp. 19–20.
- 7.
There were at least ten bookstores in Rio de Janeiro at the turn of 1850, most of them located on Ouvidor Street, in particular the Baptiste Garnier bookstore. See GRANJA, Lúcia, “Rio-Paris: primórdios da publicação da literatura brasileira chez Garnier”, in: Revista do Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (2013). Available at: http://cascavel.ufsm.br/revistas/ojs-2.2.2/index.php/letras/article/view/11756 (accessed May 2016).
- 8.
See SCHAPOCHNIK, Os jardins das delícias, p. 51.
- 9.
The Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro was considered a fellowship, not precisely a ‘voluntary association’, as suggested by Nelson Schapochnik in a specific context. An explanation of the difference is required at this point: voluntary associations refer to members who share similar professional interests. In associations, individual motivations and private interests aim to propel the individualistic economy, resulting in a specific (bourgeois) ethos that was responsible for the development of a capitalist ‘spirit’ or ‘culture’; the fellowships established survival strategies by regulating the economy for certain purposes – such as philanthropy, a variety of consumer interests and the satisfaction of specific needs within the group. In fellowships, the estate is the manifestation of a caste pride. The individualism of the voluntary associations put an end to these estate relations, while traditionalism bound the fellowships. See WEBER, Max. “Anexos: Las sectas protestantes y el espíritu del capitalismo”, in: La ética protestante y el espíritu del capitalismo. 2nd edn. México, 2011, pp. 348–50, and “Conducta de católicos, judíos, y puritanos”, in the same volume, p. 369; WEBER, Max. “Categorias sociológicas fundamentais da gestão econômica”, in: Economia e Sociedade: fundamentos da sociologia compreensiva. Brasília and São Paulo, 2004, vol. 1, pp. 44–5.
- 10.
See TAVARES, Antonio Rodrigues. “A fundação”, in: Fundamentos e actualidade do Real Gabinete Português de Leitura: edição comemorativa do 140º aniversário de fundação. Rio de Janeiro, 1977, p. 15.
- 11.
“Ata da Assembleia Geral de 10/09/1837” (General Assembly Minutes of 10 September 1837), as cited in SCHAPOCHNIK, Nelson. Os jardins das delícias, pp. 105–6.
- 12.
Universal suffrage is characteristic of fellowships and not only of ‘voluntary associations’. See WEBER, Max. “Anexos: Las sectas protestantes”, pp. 330–2. On the foundation years of the Subscription Library, see SCHAPOCHNIK, Os jardins das delícias, p. 109; see also CRUZ FERREIRA, Tania Maria Tavares Bessone da. “As Bibliotecas Públicas Cariocas no século XIX”, in: XXIV Congresso Brasileiro da Comunicação, Campo Grande/MS – September 2001. Available at: http://www.intercom.org.br/papers/nacionais/2001/papers/NP4FERREIRA.pdf (accessed 23 November 2016).
- 13.
I describe them as a small business owner class, an upholder of the new social stratum and supporter of the novels that circulated in Rio de Janeiro, Portugal, and France at the end of the 1850s and beginning of the 1860s. The epithet ‘class’ refers to the socio-professional profile of traders and not to those belonging to a working division and the categories of ‘social classes’. See PAIXÃO, Alexandro Henrique. “Um público para a literatura oitocentista no Brasil: o exemplo dos emigrantes portugueses do Rio de Janeiro”, in: Escritos: revista da Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa 5.5 (2011), available at: http://www.casaruibarbosa.gov.br/escritos/numero05/artigo06.php (accessed 23 November 2016).
- 14.
See AUERBACH, Erich. “La cour et la ville”, in: Ensaios de literatura ocidental: filologia e crítica 34 (2007), pp. 213–55.
- 15.
Cf. Catalogo dos Livros do Gabinete Portuguez de Leitura no Rio de Janeiro (Catalogue of Books of the Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro), 1857; Catalogo Supplementar dos Livros do Gabinete Portuguez de Leitura no Rio de Janeiro (Supplementary Catalogue of Books of the Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro), 1868. Microfilmes da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (Microfilms of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro).
- 16.
In counting the titles, I have not made any distinctions between novellas, fantastic narratives, travel narratives or short tales. That is because it is important to determine the quantity of publications and translations with known authors contained in the catalogue. Note that in Table 1, the number of volumes and the number of copies were extracted from the catalogue’s text. Data from this catalogue, which has already been analysed in doctoral research (Elementos constitutivos para o estudo do público literário no Rio de Janeiro e em São Paulo no Segundo Reinado. PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 2012) and in post-doctoral research (Sobre o romance-folhetim francês: Alexandre Dumas no Gabinete Português de Leitura do Rio de Janeiro (1850–1870). Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2014), with new information obtained from the Database of the Printed Matters Transatlantic Circulation Project (CITRIM) and the Technical Training Research FAPESP (2015–2016) by Karina Miki Narita on the 1858 and 1868 Catalogues of the Portuguese Subscription Library. I also thank Pablo Faria for the information extracted from the database and Camila Antunes for the translation and revision of this chapter. Thanks for the contribution are due to Luciene Lopes, Christophe Napier and Jill Napier.
- 17.
For purposes of comparison, the history section presents 2,216 volumes and the medicine section only 422 volumes. See SCHAPOCHNIK, Os jardins das delícias, pp. 121–48.
- 18.
On the circulation of novels by Alexandre Dumas in Brazil, see MENDES, Maria Lúcia Dias, “Trajetórias e tempos das traduções de Alexandre Dumas em Portugal e no Brasil”, in: Revista do Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (2013). Available at: http://cascavel.ufsm.br/revistas/ojs-2.2.2/index.php/letras/article/viewFile/11759/7188 (accessed 23 November 2016).
- 19.
“(…) the roman-feuilleton acquires its definitive form in the 1840s, with Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas as their most significant wordsmiths”, MEYER, Folhetim, p. 31 – author’s emphasis. On Sue and the formation of taste, see MEYER, Folhetim, p. 37.
- 20.
See MOLLIER, Jean-Yves. “Traduction et mondialisation de la fiction: l’exemple d’Alexandre Dumas père en Amérique du Sud”, in: Vingt-quatrièmes Assises de la traduction littéraire (Arles 2007). Arles, 2009.
- 21.
A space of sociability because it gathers individuals around literature.
- 22.
See MEYER. Folhetim, p. 38 and p. 117.
- 23.
Maria Eulália Ramicelli demonstrates the existence of four Ann Radcliffe books. See the chapter “British fiction in the far south of Brazil: the nineteenth-century collection of the Rio-Grandese Library” in this volume.
- 24.
I refer to the catalogue of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro (1877) and to a variety of catalogues slipped into the inner pages of several books published by the bookseller Baptiste Garnier in Rio de Janeiro. This information was gathered from the research of scholars participating in Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação Científica para o Ensino Médio (PIBIC-EM/Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa e Extensão/Unicamp e CNPq), co-ordinated by Márcia Abreu and supervised by Anderson Ricardo Trevisan and Julio Modenez.)
- 25.
See RIBEIRO, José Alcides. Imprensa e ficção no século XIX. Edgar Allan Poe e A Narrativa de Arthur Gordon Pym. São Paulo, 1996, p. 55. See also MEYER. Folhetim, p. 158.
- 26.
See SCHÜCKING, El gusto literario, p. 128.
- 27.
See PAIXÃO, Alexandro Henrique. “Luiz Nicolau Fagundes Varella e a Faculdade de Direito de São Paulo”, in: BRITO, Clovis Carvalho, and DOS SANTOS, Robson (eds). Escrita e Sociedade: estudos de sociologia da literatura. Goiânia, 2008, pp. 21–3.
- 28.
See MEYER, “Os modos da produção rocambolesca”, in: Folhetim, pp. 157–9.
- 29.
See MOLLIER, “Traduction et mondialisation de la fiction”, pp. 227–8.
- 30.
The constant reference is SCHÜCKING, El gusto literario. For another reference and perspective about the literary taste, see BOURDIEU, Pierre. A distinção: crítica social do julgamento. Porto Alegre and São Paulo, 2007.
- 31.
Cf. Livro do Copiador do Gabinete Português de Leitura (Copybook of the Portuguese Subscription Library) (1839–1862).
- 32.
On Firmin Didot et frères, see MOLLIER, Jean-Yves. O dinheiro e as letras: história do capitalismo editorial. São Paulo, 2010, pp. 109–37.
- 33.
See ESCARPIT, Que sais-je? Le point des connaissances actuelles – Sociologie de la littérature, pp. 117–19. In relation to reading practices, see CHARTIER, Roger. “Do Livro à Leitura”, in: CHARTIER, Roger. Práticas da leitura. São Paulo, 1996, pp. 77–103.
- 34.
This issue has been discussed in MOLLIER, Jean-Yves. “Ambiguïtés et réalités du commerce des livres entre la France et la Belgique au XIXe siècle”, in: QUAGHEBEUR, Marc, and SAVY, Nivole (eds). France-Belgique 1848–1914: affinités-ambiguïtés, Actes du colloque des 7, 9 et 9 mai 1996. Brussels, 1997, pp. 51–66.
- 35.
On the circulation of the British novel, see the analysis by Sandra Vasconcelos in this volume, “Circuits and crossings: the case of A Família Elliot”.
- 36.
See BUARQUE DE HOLANDA, Sérgio. “Brasil-Portugal”, in: FAUSTO, Boris, and BUARQUE DE HOLANDA, Sérgio (eds). O Brasil Monárquico: Declínio e Queda do Império. 5th edn. Rio de Janeiro, 1995, vol. 4, p. 213.
- 37.
From the year of its foundation, the board was responsible for the journal subscriptions. If this was the reality of the fellowship in the first moments of its existence, over 20 years later, between 1860 and 1885, a gradual increase in the number of subscriptions of Brazilian and foreign journals in the printed reports becomes evident. By way of illustration, some of the journals subscribed to by the Subscription Library from 1860 are: O Americano; A Ástrea; O Brasil; O Brasil Ilustrado; O Correio Mercantil; Diário do Rio de Janeiro; Jornal do Commercio; O Socialista; A União; O Cruzeiro; Gazeta de Notícias; Diário Official; Diário de Pernambuco; Gazeta da Bahia; Jornal do Commercio de Lisboa; Revue des Deux Mondes; Journal de Débats; Le Fígaro; The Nineteenth Century; The Ilustration London News; Allgemeine Deutsch Zeitung; La Illustracion Espanhola y Americana; The New York Herald; Rivista Europa, among others.
- 38.
The presence of Portuguese literature in the Subscription Library from 1868 on is beyond the scope of this chapter, but the subject is developed in PAIXÃO, Alexandro Henrique. “Homens práticos e positivos (1868–1870)”, in: Elementos constitutivos, 2012. For more on Camillo Castelo-Branco, see the chapter by Juliana Maia de Queiroz in this volume, “Brazilian novels in Portugal through two publishers”.
- 39.
See SCHÜCKING, El gusto literario, p. 112.
- 40.
On the ‘novel as culture’, see MORETTI, Franco (ed.). O Romance. Vol. 1: A cultura do romance. São Paulo, 2009.
- 41.
Consumers are book readers. Unfortunately there are no clues concerning their reading act.
- 42.
On economic management, see WEBER, Economia e sociedade, pp. 199–203; vol. 2, pp. 175–86.
- 43.
The transnational relations with Brussels will not be discussed here, as the counterfeited matter lies beyond the scope of our research and also because no purchase record between the Subscription Library and a Belgian bookseller could be found. An explanation for the absence of records or data is that the Subscription Library of Lisbon had control of the negotiations with Brussels. Lisbon used to send not only the translations of novels, but also some French editions, to Rio de Janeiro.
- 44.
See DE FREITAS, César A. M. Miranda. “Alívio de tristes e consolação de queixosos (1648): novela exemplar”, in: Revista de Educação da ESE de FAFE, 2011, available at: http://www.iesfafe.pt/tmp/Uploads/Publicaces%20Internas/2freitas.cesar_alivio-tese.mestrado_convertido.pdf (accessed 23 November 2016).
- 45.
For more on Alfredo Hogan, see the chapter by Paulo Motta Oliveira in this volume.
- 46.
Some fictional prose works with no author name serve as good examples: A família africana ou A escrava convertida (1852); O Fantasma Branco (1833); Fernando ou A história de um Jovem Espanhol (1842); O filho do Pedreiro (1841); Mathilde e Alfredo (1846); and A vítima do amor ou Joanna Gray (1819).
- 47.
In the words of Marx: “the difficulty does not lie in understanding that art [is connected] to certain forms of the social development. The difficulty resides in the fact that they still provide us with an aesthetic pleasure”. MARX, Karl. “Introdução [à Crítica da Economia Política]”, in: Os Pensadores. São Paulo, 1999, p. 48 (author’s translation).
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Paixão, A.H. (2017). The Literary Taste for Novels in the Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro. 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_3
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