NewspapersandMagazines

For literature to exist in the city of Rio de Janeiro, it was first necessary to have a press. And that only happened with the arrival of the Portuguese royal family in 1808. The court's arrival transformed the city's cultural life and introduced the Royal Press, using English machines. Still in 1808, the Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro became the first newspaper to circulate nationally.

The operation of the city's only printing press remained the government's responsibility until 1821, when the press finally became free in the country. Not only did the number of print shops increase, but prior censorship, which had existed since the beginning of journalism in the city, was also abolished. These developments sparked an explosion of newspapers and caused the habit of reading – initially of official government information and notes about European royals – to spread among the literate population.

Image description: The image is a page from an old newspaper, dated November 16, 1899, located in Rio de Janeiro. The spatial layout begins on the left, where the title "O PAIZ" appears in large black letters. Below it is an edition number and date. On the right, there is a column with information about subscriptions and the single-copy price. The newspaper's main content is divided into several sections, including regional, commercial, and entertainment news. The colors are predominantly black and white, with some areas highlighted in red.

Some of the newspapers that circulated in the city, still in the first half of the 19th century, were O Paiz, O Diário de Notícias, the Jornal do Comércio (founded in 1827 and one of the most long-lived), the Gazeta da Tarde and the Diário do Rio de Janeiro – widely known at the time as the “Butter Diário,” for presenting the prices of food staples on a daily basis, and famous for the applause earned in 1868 by Castro Alves, when he read, for hours on end in the newsroom, his play Gonzaga ou a revolução de Minas.

Among the magazines, we have O Mosquito, Semana Illustrada, Revista Illustrada and Revista Brasileira - a publication that spread the practice of literary criticism and where the serialized novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas was even published, during the year 1881.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white engraving, dated 1866, published in Revista Ilustrada. At the top, we see the magazine's title in large, ornate lettering. Below it, there is text with information about the content and the publication. The main scene shows a figure dressed as a skeleton holding a parasol, while several people stand around it. On the left, a woman holds a basket full of fruit. In the background, two women are talking, and on the right, a child stands near them. The text at the bottom of the image mentions caution regarding fruit from Teresópolis, highlighting its flavor and the need for care to prevent it from ripening too quickly.

There was also a series of ephemeral newspapers, tied to political debate and produced in an almost artisanal way by a single person. These were the so-called pasquins, with names famous at the time such as Cipriano Barata. One of the main short-lived newspapers of that period was A Marmota Fluminense, which began operating in 1849 as A Marmota na Corte and would later be called simply A Marmota. It was an initiative of the typographer, printer, and editor Francisco de Paula Brito. It was in the Marmota that Machado de Assis published his first short stories and poems.

Image description: The image is an old newspaper dated March 17, 1857, titled "Marmota Fluminense." It is in black and white. At the top, there is the newspaper's issue number and date. Below, the newspaper's title stands out prominently. The page contains various typographic elements, including headings, subtitles, and text. On the left, there is a heading that mentions "A Marmota" and "Cartas familiares," followed by smaller-scale text. On the right, there is a subtitle called "O amor lascivo" with text below it. The background is white, and the elements are written in black.

Gradually, newspapers gained more and more space in the daily life of Rio's residents and became an essential vehicle for aspiring writers to begin publishing their first pieces and works. It was at the Correio Mercantil, in 1854, that José de Alencar began his career as a columnist and journalist. It was at that very same newspaper that Manuel Antônio de Almeida wrote and, in 1858, secured young Machado de Assis his first job as a proofreader. Soon after, he would begin his brilliant career as a columnist at that same paper.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, writer and journalist became practically synonymous. Between 1840 and 1870, the number of newspaper copies sold in the city went from five thousand to thirty thousand. Many wrote under pseudonyms, so they could contribute to different outlets simultaneously. The strategy also served to protect authors from political threats or to keep them from being linked to literary practice, still seen by many as work unworthy of a real career.

Even so, it was through the city's newspapers and magazines that Carioca literature gained a face of its own, starting in the 1850s. Besides Alencar, Manuel Antônio de Almeida and Machado, names such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, Olavo Bilac, Raul Pompéia, Aluízio Azevedo, Bernardo Guimarães and many other lesser-known writers made journalism a constant space for literary creation – a tradition that would endure for the following decades.