Cartas De Inglaterra

''Cartas de Inglaterra'' ("Letters from England") is a collection of journalism by the 19th-century Portuguese novelist Eça de Queiroz. He worked in the Portuguese consular service and was stationed at Newcastle upon Tyne from late 1874 until April 1879; from then until 1888 he was at Bristol. During this period he published ''O Primo Basílio'' ("Cousin Bazilio") and ''Os Maias'' ("The Maias"), but he was also writing occasional London letters for the Lisbon daily newspaper ''Diário de Notícias''. Some of these afterwards appeared in book form as ''Cartas de Inglaterra''. The collection was published in English in 1970 as ''Letters from England'' with a translation by Ann Stevens. Six of the letters from this book were subsequently published, together with many other letters written by Eça when he lived in the United Kingdom, as ''Eça's English Letters'', with additional translations by Alison Aiken.

Outline of ''Cartas de Inglaterra''

In its final published form ''Cartas de Inglaterra'' includes the following chapters:

# ''Afeganistão e Irlanda'', "Afghanistan and Ireland": a prophetic analysis, full of black humour, of two overseas adventures in which the British Empire was currently mired
# ''Acerca de livros'', "About books": London's autumn "seasons": yachting, shooting, hunting, angling, burglary, lectures, scientific congresses. The book season is the last to be sketched, with a special glance at the vast number of new travel books
# ''O inverno em Londres'', "Winter in London": London is to have a winter season this year
# ''O Natal'', "Christmas" and Father Christmas
# ''Literatura de Natal'', "Christmas books": books for children, a genre in which English literature was already rich, while Portuguese had scarcely any
# ''Israelismo'', "Judaism": the alarming growth of anti-Semitism in Germany in 1880, apparently with the tacit approval of the German government
# ''A Irlanda e a Liga Agrária'', "Ireland and the Land League": growing resistance, led by Parnell, to oppression in the Irish countryside
# ''Lorde Beaconsfield'', "Lord Beaconsfield": the death of the statesman and author in 1881, his remarkable life story, his fantastic and unreadable fiction (e.g. ''Tancred'') and poetry ('' The Revolutionary Epick'')
# ''Os ingleses no Egipto'', "The English in Egypt": the destruction and occupation of Alexandria by British forces in 1882 and the danger of Jihad. See quotation below
# ''O Brasil e Portugal'', "Brazil and Portugal": reflections on a special article on Brazil in ''The Times''
# ''A festa das crianças'', "The children's party": an elaborate fancy dress party somewhere near Tintagel
# ''Uma partida feita ao ''Times, "A practical joke at ''The Times''": a few lines of erotic text interpolated, by an unknown hand, into the report of a speech by Sir William Harcourt

Eça de Queiroz and the English

Eça, a cosmopolitan widely read in English literature, had no admiration for English society or the British Empire, though he was fascinated by them. This bitter sketch of the British in their Empire comes from the six-article series ''Os ingleses no Egipto'', "The English in Egypt":

References

{{José Maria de Eça de Queirós

External links

Books of Eça de Queiroz on line

List of books online

Portuguese non-fiction literature
Books about journalism