Livros do Brasil publishing house and the edition of Brazilian novels in Portugal in the 1940s

Abstract

As an effort of literary and editorial historiography, the present article deals with the Portuguese editions of Brazilian novels by the publishing company Livros do Brasil, a house founded in Lisbon, in 1944, by António de Sousa Pinto. Based on the recovery of primary sources, this article mainly examines the negotiations between Sousa Pinto and José Olympio regarding the publication in Portugal of the titles of two prominent authors of the so-called Brazilian generation of 1930’s: José Lins do Rego and Rachel de Queiroz. More specifically, this paper recovers the clash between the interventionist attitude of Sousa Pinto, who defended the need to adjust the texts of both writers to the European variety of the Portuguese language, in order to bring them closer to the Portuguese readership, and the initial rejection of the novelists, who demanded the strict observance of  the “Bazilianity” employed  by them.