ABSTRACT
This article correlates aspects related to bibliophilia, to reading and investigation practices, as well as to the collaboration of a “Republic of Letters” of intercontinental coverage in the Portuguese college professor Joaquim de Carvalho’s establishing of an encyclopedic library and his publication plan, especially in the 1950s. It was in this period that the former director of the Coimbra University Press (1921 - 1934) - a position that Carvalho exercised until the closing of the publishing house by Salazar - intensified the participation of Latin American authors, mainly Brazilian ones, in his editorial projects and initiatives with the collaboration of scholars such as Fernando de Azevedo, Florestan Fernandes and João Cruz Costa (São Paulo), as well as Leopoldo Zea (Mexico), Miró Quesada (Peru) and Risieri Frondizi (Argentina). In this sense, the emphasis is on the issues related to the pleasure of the bibliophile-investigator in the acquisition and possession of books and documents and also on the impacts of this “book hunger” in the concretization of editorial projects and in the establishing of intellectual exchanges with emphasis on Brazil. It will be possible to observe this path by means of some markers that relate to the construction of his personal library, such as: the acquisition of Brazilian books, accelerated after Carvalho’s trip as a visiting professor at USP in 1953, which consisted on a significant basis of this collection; the epistolary exchanges with intellectuals of an academic community extended in both sides of the Atlantic; the increase in the collaboration of Brazilian authors at the magazine Revista Filosófica, edited by the professor in Coimbra; and the editorial projects accomplished by Joaquim de Carvalho including the publishing of sources from the colonial period and Luso-Brazilian writers.
Keywords:
Intellectuals; Books and private libraries; Portuguese New State; Ibero-American exchanges; Revista Filosófica; Joaquim de Carvalho