BookstoresandPublishingHouses

For a long time, the role of bookstores in shaping Rio de Janeiro's literary life was fundamental. They were often, at the same time, a meeting place, a place to sell books, and a place to publish unpublished authors. Without the work of booksellers passionate about their craft, the Brazilian literature circulating in Rio de Janeiro would have taken other paths.

On March 25, 1812, the Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro was already announcing the sale of books. At Paulo Martin's shop, one could find the novel entitled Filosofa do amor, ou Cartas de dois amantes apaixonados e virtuosos.

Authorship was not the most important thing about the ad that appeared amid information about vessels and other general matters. In 1820, researchers such as Ubiratan Machado indicated that Rio de Janeiro had only four bookstores – or rather, a kind of general store that, among all sorts of products, also sold books.

Years later, however, the city had already tripled the number of establishments, showing that, even with a scarce audience, the reading habit was beginning to fuel a trade.

The first house that can be called a bookstore as we know it today was Louis Mongie's, which operated on Rua do Ouvidor between 1832 and 1853. The predominantly French presence in the city's book market was already evident in the names of establishments such as Cremière, Laemmert, or Villeneuve.

Image description: This is a photograph of an old library. On the left, we see a staircase with a gray carpet beneath it. In the background, there is a large wall of stacked books. In the central area, there are tables with chairs and hanging lamps. On the right, there is a large wooden table with a metal grille. The floor is covered with gray carpets.

Following the successful Rio de Janeiro experience of Paula Brito's establishments -- a mix of print shop, publishing house, and bookstore -- the establishment that followed as a space for sociability and publication, as well as a commercial reference point of the time, was the also French Livraria Garnier, founded by Baptiste Louis Garnier in 1844.

Located in the heart of the legendary Rua do Ouvidor, like Mongie's, it was the first to have a shop window and armchairs on the sidewalks for customers' conversations. Garnier was home to most of the writers and aspiring literary figures of the Rio court, pioneering the payment of ten percent in royalties and the publication of famous Brazilian authors. José de Alencar and Machado de Assis remained connected to Garnier until the end of their lives. Its publishing house also raised the quality of the Brazilian publishing world by having most of its books (including Brazilian ones) printed in France, escaping the many technical problems that local printing still caused.

With the growth of the literary scene and the press during the republican period, new bookstores and publishers established themselves on the Rio scene. Two of the main ones were Francisco Alves, founded in 1854 with a long history, and José Olympio, founded in 1931 in São Paulo and permanently moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1934.

Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of a bookstore. On the left side, we see a person with their back turned, holding an object. Next to them is another person facing forward, wearing a white uniform. In the center, there is a large bookshelf full of stacked books. On the right, there is another person facing forward, also wearing a white uniform, holding an object. At the top, there is a sign with the name "Olympio Editora."

Besides having been a very successful publishing house – the largest in the country in the 1940s and 1950s, publishing almost 90% of national authors – its space at number 110 Rua do Ouvidor was, like the old Mongie and Garnier, the main meeting point for both newcomer and established authors, such as José Lins do Rego, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Rachel de Queiroz, Graciliano Ramos, Jorge Amado, and Guimarães Rosa, many of them published by José Olympio's own publishing house.

In the 1960s, the Rio de Janeiro publishing house that took over as the leading home for Brazilian authors was Civilização Brasileira, run by Ênio Silveira. Connected to the political changes that had been taking place in Latin America and around the world during that period, the publisher's catalog translated fundamental works of Western critical thought while, at the same time, launching numerous Brazilian authors.

Another Rio publishing house of great importance during this period was Zahar, founded in 1956 by brothers Lucien, Ernesto, and Jorge Zahar. There were also local ventures, such as Editora Sabiá, created in 1966 and run by the writer friends Rubem Braga and Fernando Sabino. Before that, it was called Editora do Autor, but a problem with partner Walter Costa led the two writers to start again under a new name.

In the 1970s, publishing houses did not change much, but new bookstores became a reference point in the city. One was Leonardo da Vinci, opened in 1952, selling only titles in French. When it also began selling Brazilian titles the following decade, the bookstore, then located in the basement of the Marquês do Herval building, on Avenida Rio Branco, became a must-visit spot for readers.

Image description: The image is a photograph of a bookstore. In the center, a man is looking at books stacked in front of him. To his right, there is another person also looking at books. The background is filled with shelves packed with books. The books vary in size and format, with colorful covers and different textures.

Another bookstore that left its mark on this history during that time of political suffocation was Muro. Also located in a basement – but of a building on Praça General Osório, in Ipanema – Rui Campos's bookstore opened in 1975 and hosted a series of book launches and events linked to the generation of poets known as the marginal generation and groups like Nuvem Cigana. Later, the same owners opened the bookstore Dazibao and, in the following years, Livraria da Travessa.

In the 21st century, technological changes related to book printing and editing expanded the number of independent publishers doing important work, such as Dantes, whose work began with a used bookstore in Leblon; Sete Letras, which is also a bookshop and was responsible for renewing Rio's poetry scene in the 2000s; and Folha Seca, located in downtown Rio de Janeiro and specializing in the city's history and culture.