The Literary Taste for Novels in the Portuguese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro

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.