This book brings a renewed critical focus to the history of novel writing, publishing, selling and reading, expanding its viewing beyond national territories. Relying on primary sources (such as advertisements, censorship reviews, publisher and bookstore catalogues), the book examines the paths taken by novels in their shifts between Europe and Brazil, investigates the flow of translations in both directions, pays attention to the successful novels of the time and analyses the critical response to fiction in both sides of the Atlantic. It reveals that neither nineteenth century culture can be properly understood by focusing on a single territory, nor literature can be fully perceived by looking only to the texts, ignoring their material existence and their place in social and economical practices.

The editor is one of the leading Brazilian book historians in the world

Introduction.- Fiction as an Element of Cultural Connection; Marcia Abreu.- PART I: READING NOVELS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC.- Chapter 1: A Transnational Literate Community: Reactions to Novels in Europe and Brazil; Márcia Abreu.- Chapter 2: The Literary Taste for Novels in the Portugese Subscription Library in Rio de Janeiro; Alexandro Henrique Paixão.- Chapter 3: The Roman Judiciaire and Brazilian Literature: Reception, Meaningsand Appropriations; Ana Gomes Porto.- Chapter 4: The Bachelor's Library: Pornographic Books on the Brazil - Europe Circuit in the Late Nineteenth Century; Leonardo Mendes.- Chapter 5: Evaluation of Literature at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Change and Permanence in Critical Discourse; Leandro Thomaz Almeida.- PART II: TRANSLATIONS.- Chapter 6: Circuits and Crossings: The Case of A Família Elliot; Sandra Guardini Teixeira Vasconcelos.- Chapter 7: The Brazilian Novels O Guarany and Innocencia translated into German: National Production and the Bestseller in the Long Nineteenth-Century; Wiebke Röben de Alencar Xavier.- Chapter 8: French Readings of Brazil: From the Translations of O Guarany and Innocencia to the Exoticism of the Novels by Adrien Delpech;Ilana Heineberg.- PART III: TRACKS BETWEEN EUROPE AND BRAZIL.- Chapter 9: Narratives that Travel: Novels Written in Portugese and Published in Paris; Paulo Motta Oliveira.- Chapter 10: Collections of French Novels on the Atlantic Route; Valéria Augusti.- Chapter 11: British Fiction in the Far South of Brazil: the Nineteenth Century Collection of the Rio-Grandese Library; Maria Eulália Ramicelli.- Chapter 12: Brazilian Novels in Portugal Through Two French Publishers; Juliana Maia de Queiroz.- Notes on the Contributors.- Index.