CHAPTER 19

Rio de Janeiro’s Publishing Market (1840–1850)

THE BOOKSHOP OF Francisco Luís Pinto e Companhia, a supplier to “His Majesty the Emperor’s library,” specialized in scientific and legal works. Located on Rua do Ouvidor, that shop frequently received shipments of French books imported via Lisbon and, according to its newspaper ads, Francisco Luís Pinto guaranteed that he would “sell all the books adopted in the law schools of São Paulo and Recife for much less than any other establishments.”1

In late February 1863, a resident of Rua de São Bento bought over 300,000 réis’ worth of books from Luís Pinto’s shop, and his purchases were duly packed up and placed in a box bearing his initials, B.J.F.V. We do not know for sure, but those initials might have belonged to an academic, or to the parent or relative of a student or lecturer. What we do know is that, on February 25, the “casket of books” was sent to the customer’s address. A slave was carrying it on his head, walking behind one of the bookshop’s clerks. When they had nearly reached their destination, the enslaved black man—possibly hired specifically as a porter for that shipment—fled while the clerk’s head was turned, taking the books with him.2 We cannot dismiss the possibility that the slave may have known how to read and was interested in the contents of those works, but it is also possible that he intended to sell them. After all, he could have made some 300,000 réis that way, and if they were legal or scientific works, he might have found buyers very quickly. Then again, he may have soon discovered that selling books in Rio de Janeiro was no easy task. Depending on the genre of the publication, it could be even harder.

One reviewer of Confederação dos Tamoios was categorical in this regard when referring to literature: “Our books, or those dealing with our matters, are not sold, or sell so slowly that not everyone can risk their capital on publishing.” For the journalist, such books were doomed “to being forgotten in a dusty corner of some library shelf,” for “they only occasionally receive the sincere homage of some youthful spirit, which may be enough for the poet, but not enough for the bookseller.”³ Essentially, there were two problems for the Brazilian publishing market in Paula Brito’s time: first, the difficulty of producing printed matter, and second, the barriers to the distribution of these cultural goods.

Without a doubt, the producers of intellectual products and the products themselves—in other words, printed matter in different formats—were gaining more and more ground in the daily lives of residents of Rio de Janeiro and other parts of the Empire. However, in the 1840s and ’50s, there could be considerable obstacles to the production of and access to those products. Except for the contents of their pages and the manpower used to produce printed matter, including slave labor, it must be considered that, to publish a book or newspaper in Paula Brito’s day, everything else had to be imported. “All of the materials,” complained an anonymous writer in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, indignant at the increase in customs duties in March 1857, “from mechanical presses to type, from paper and ink to the common string that makes the page turn, comes from foreign parts; in this city, it is not possible to manufacture any of these objects, even to make up for a momentary lack of supply.”⁴ “Printers are already burdened by the size of newspapers,” the Correio da tarde’s writer added, “paying tariffs for printing ink, because it is not manufactured here; paying tariffs for the presses, because they are not made here—[because] manufacturing here is still so far behind.”⁵

As Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin observed when studying the emergence of the book in the fifteenth century, “The printing press is a major consumer of paper.”6 Therefore, the chronic problem of ensuring an adequate supply of printing paper in Rio de Janeiro is a case in point. Paula Brito felt it first-hand when printing the Relatório da Repartição dos Negócios da Justiça (Report of the Legal Affairs Bureau) in 1855.⁷ On that occasion, having run out of paper, the publisher appealed to the Jornal do commercio, which promptly provided him with the necessary reams. However, disturbed by what had happened, Paula Brito published an article on the problem in Marmota fluminense. “There is a desperate need for a paper mill among us that meets the most urgent printing requirements,” wrote the publisher, adding, “The lack of paper in Rio de Janeiro is the reason for the high price which has always been the case in the market, and it should also be noted that we have no storehouse, at the very least, for what foreign parts can send us.”⁸

In 1847, there was a mill in Salvador, Bahia, that produced printing paper, but its daily output of fifty reams was only enough to meet the needs of that city’s presses. That same year, in Rio de Janeiro, the Frenchman André Gaillard came up with a plan to build a large paper mill, for which he had managed to obtain government funding in the form of lottery money. Meanwhile, Zeferino Ferrez was in France, looking to purchase the machinery necessary to start up another establishment of that kind in the capital. For the lack of one, Rio de Janeiro would soon have two paper mills, both located in Andaraí.⁹

However, nothing went as expected. By 1848, all the equipment Zeferino Ferrez imported, including a “thirty-eight-foot-diameter hydraulic wheel” was still in its shipping crates, awaiting the completion of the mill. Then, the paper samples manufactured by André Gaillard that were sent to the government—“an inferior kind that can be used for wrapping, and another of better quality on which newspapers can be printed”—were considered unsatisfactory because, “in addition to creases, there are inconsistencies which the owner believes will disappear, although this is not very likely.”¹⁰ Both entrepreneurs of the Rio de Janeiro paper industry met a tragic end. Possibly because he had failed to make good-quality paper, André Gaillard shot himself in 1849. Zeferino Ferrez and his wife, as well as two of their slaves and heads of cattle, died mysteriously in 1851. Their deaths led to the deputy chief constable of Engenho Velho to exhume the bodies and order chemical tests of the water used in the mill.¹¹ Even so, in 1857, the two paper mills in Andaraí were still running. Despite using “water-powered machinery,” according to the Report of the Minister and Secretary of State for Imperial Affairs, the mill owned by “the late Zeferino Ferrez . . . is limited to the production of common paper, producing thirty-two reams per day.” Meanwhile, the establishment “of the widow Gaillard makes a similar kind paper but in a larger quantity.”12 Common paper was of no use to printers.

In addition to being of dubious quality, throughout most of the nineteenth century, the paper manufactured in Brazil was predominantly made from cotton or linen rags. This process made Brazilian paper even more expensive than its Belgian counterpart, for example, which was made from wood pulp.¹³ In 1851, Guilherme Schüch, the Baron of Capanema, established the Orianda Mill in the outskirts of Petrópolis to produce good-quality paper.¹⁴ However, four years later, as Paula Brito pointed out, “Mr. Capanema’s paper mill, which we know is being built on a large scale, is reported to have struggled to achieve its aim completely, which is to manufacture paper equal to the foreign [imports].”¹⁵ As a result, Rio de Janeiro’s presses were still being supplied by ships arriving mainly from the port of Le Havre. The cost of these imports, however, directly impacted the price of printed matter, in Paulo Brito’s assessment:

The printed matter [in our market] is not more economical because the paper and type come to us from France; and if it were not for the books they send us from Paris (which even our young people study), if we are doing badly in literature, science, and the arts, we could be much worse, seeing that not everything that we Brazilians need is printed in Brazil.¹⁶

Curiously enough, none of the shipments found in this study were addressed to the publisher by name. In early December 1856, for example, the French galley Nouvelle Pauline unloaded fifty-seven crates of paper in Rio de Janeiro, of which “thirty-two crates [belonged] to Villeneuve [of the Jornal do commercio], thirteen to Muniz Barreto [the owner of Correio mercantil], eight to Glette, four to Laemmert.” In addition to paper, the Nouvelle Pauline also delivered four barrels of printing ink ordered by a certain Féron, and a box of type for J. Antônio dos Santos.¹⁷

However, in addition to the costs of printing with imported paper, ink, and presses, there were times when the printer was also a distributor, especially in the case of periodicals. When Dous de Dezembro was still active, Paula Brito printed and distributed Guanabara, a monthly magazine devoted to the arts, science, and literature. “Written by an association of literati,” the publication was directed by Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre, Antônio Gonçalves Dias, and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo.18 Initially, the magazine went through some very hard times, such as the illness of two of its writers laid low by the yellow fever epidemic of 1850, as well as other problems linked to “the thousand things on which the life of a newspaper essentially depends.” Paula Brito, who was very familiar with the “material life” of publications, began printing and distributing the magazine in 1851, as one of its relieved writers reported:

Mr. Francisco de Paula Brito, to whom our subscribers should now address any complaints they may have, is responsible for everything concerning the material part of Guanabara: readers, who cannot fail to be aware of the solicitude and skill with which Mr. Paula Brito usually carries out such responsibilities, will undoubtedly see, in the task he has undertaken, another assurance of the future regularity of this periodical.¹⁹

In 1855, the Guanabara had a print run of 680 copies, according to Paula Brito in his reply to a letter from Francisco Freire Alemão, a doctor and writer for the magazine.²⁰ The following year, however, it ceased publication, and in his farewell editorial, Canon Fernandes Pinheiro, the editorin-chief, acknowledged Paula Brito: “We express here our gratitude to the worthy publisher, Mr. Paula Brito, for the gentlemanly manner with which he has always treated us.”²¹

However, in other cases, mainly due to production costs, the printing of newspapers was not devoid of conflict. This was the case with the Auxiliador da Indústria Nacional (Auxiliary of National Industry), the publication of the prestigious Auxiliary Society for National Industry, which had been in circulation since 1833, and which Paula Brito began printing in September 1852.²² Relations between the publisher and the Auxiliary Society, chaired by the Viscount of Abrantes, certainly became closer as of 1851, when Paula Brito’s name appeared in the list of its 365 members, while the association became a shareholder of Dous de Dezembro.²³

The annual costs involved in the production of a periodical like Auxiliador da Indústria Nacional—twelve issues, with illustrations and a monthly print run of one thousand copies—were high. According to the Society’s treasurer, 60 percent of its total expenses, reported to be 3,712,000 réis in 1853, went to the publication of the magazine. Printing costs came to 1,200,000 réis, followed by binding (120,000 réis), the editor’s fee (600,000 réis), the delivery boy’s wages (120,000 réis), and finally engravings (200,000 réis). The Society’s total revenue, reported at the same time, was over 8,000,000 réis, and its main sources of income were a “provision from the National Treasury” (4,000,000 réis) and the monthly membership fees (2,400,000 réis). Only 60,000 réis of its total income came from the subscriptions and individual sales of the Auxiliador da Indústria Nacional. That amount covered 2.6 percent of the magazine’s production costs.24 To make things worse, a letter from Paula Brito written in July 1854 reflects the strained relations between the Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional and the publisher. Paula Brito complained about the “high price of everything” and asked the Society for more money. Otherwise, he would stop printing the magazine:

Dear Sir,

As a result of the high price of everything, it is not convenient for me to print the Auxiliador, as it has been done so far, one thousand copies with cover, binding, [etc.], for less than 150,000 réis, that is, 40,000 réis more than what it has cost so far; you will decide on this as you see fit, [and I am] certain that the engravings, drawings, etc., can be explained when convenient.

I have the honor to be

Your

[illegible] dear [illegible abbrev.]

July 25, 1854

Francisco de Paula Brito²⁵

According to the figures he gave, the Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional was paying 110,000 réis for each monthly issue with a print run of one thousand copies, including the cover and binding. However, pressured by production costs, Paula Brito wanted to increase that amount to 150,000 réis. In this case, they failed to reach an agreement, as that same month the magazine began to be printed by the Widow Vianna Júnior, in Rua d’Ajuda.²⁶

If the importation of raw materials made printing more expensive, another difficulty faced by publishers and printers who, like Paula Brito, were also responsible for distribution, was posting books and newspapers from Rio de Janeiro. Invariably, every newspaper and periodical printed in the capital had two prices, one for the capital and another for the provinces. Due to the price of postage, the printed matter cost about 1,000 to 2,000 réis more than the amount charged in Rio de Janeiro. However, all indications are that the postal system was unreliable, which made it very hard to distribute the printed matter. “A marmota’s editors cannot, under any circumstances, answer for the Post Office’s constant failures, once the shipments are sent, which occur with customary regularity,” wrote Paula Brito in April 1858, justifying himself to his subscribers in the provinces.27 In 1860, he attempted to solve the problem by sending A marmota to “outside subscribers” on a monthly basis. Thus, instead of receiving separate issues twice a week, provincial readers would get all that month’s issues at the end of the month. This prevented individual issues from getting lost in the post, which was a constant problem, and the “serialized novels and articles [would] arrive in full.”²⁸

Where books were concerned, the problem persisted. Although the records show that Paula Brito was a representative of Santos e Companhia, “printer-booksellers in Pernambuco,” providing Rio’s readers with “beautiful publications of excellent works, not only instructive but entertaining, in soft cover and hard cover,”²⁹ the inter-provincial postal service of that time was unreliable. Recalling his student days at the São Paulo Law School in the 1840s, José de Alencar observed that “In that time, the sale of books was, as it is today, [one of] luxury goods; however, although cheaper, literary works had a smaller circulation.” Alencar explained that this was due to the “lack of communication with Europe and the greater scarcity of bookshops and libraries.”³⁰ Recent studies have shown that it was not until the 1870s that, packed in the wagons of cargo trains or on steamships, books and newspapers began to circulate more freely throughout the Empire. The leading role of Baptiste Louis Garnier, the French publisher and bookseller based in Rio, in the distribution of printed matter in the last three decades of the nineteenth century is also seen as a decisive factor.³¹

In the 1879s, even exports of Brazilian books to Portugal began gaining momentum due to the efforts of Ernesto Chardron, a French bookseller based in Oporto (Porto).³² However, until stronger links were established between Rio, Oporto, and Lisbon, the case of the Confederação dos Tamoios is a good example of the slack dynamics of that business. In a bibliographic essay dedicated to its author, Gonçalves de Magalhães, Inocêncio Silva wrote that he was resigned to the fact that “few Portuguese readers will have seen [Confederação dos Tamoios], because perhaps not even ten or twelve copies have reached Portugal.”33 Therefore, Paula Brito did not live long enough to benefit from Chardron’s efforts in Portugal, or from the railways and steam ships in Brazil. Symptomatically, the list of 17,500 books in the inventory of the Rio de Janeiro publisher’s estate included sixty copies of Gonçalves de Magalhães’s poem, probably stranded by logistical obstacles.