Agulhas e galhofas no romance A Família Agulha (1870) de Luís Guimarães Júnior

Abstract

Luís Guimarães Júnior was born on February 17, 1845 in Rio de Janeiro and died on May 20, 1898 in Lisbon. The writer most often forgotten by literary stories and criticism in general was an important man of letters in the 19th century. He produced a considerable number of texts of the most diverse genres and among all this diversity of writings published mainly in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro there is the work A família da Agulha (1870). In view of the rescue of this important literary production of the 19th century, in this research we intend to carry out a critical analysis of this novel, highlighting the issues present in the work and the mechanisms of construction of the narrative itself. Moreover we intend to highlight aspects related to the author's life, his relations with the publishing market of the time, the engagiment with the reading public as well as the critical receptions about his publications in general and more specifically the novel in question. Such appreciation was consolidated mainly from the analysis of some primary sources due to the scarcity of research and studies that target both the writer and his work. Among these sources, the newspaper Diário do Rio de Janeiro from 1869 to 1872 is cited as an example, a period in which Guimarães Júnior served as the writer of this periodical.