A flâneur in the backcountry: Sylvio Floreal in the northwest of São Paulo

ABSTRACT

Domingos Alexandre, journalist and writer from São Paulo and best known by the pseudonym Sylvio Floreal, was one of the city’s most important chroniclers in the first decades of the twentieth century. However, his biography still remains mostly unknown, despite the increasingly growing interest in his work. The present paper aims to analyze Sylvio Floreal's passage through the city of São José do Rio Preto, located in the countryside of São Paulo State, between May and June of 1926, helping to reveal his professional whereabouts immediately prior to the production of what would be his last book, O Brasil Trágico - impressões, visões e mistérios de Mato Grosso [The Tragic Brazil - impressions, visions and mysteries of Mato Grosso], published in 1928, which, at the same time, sheds some light on the final years of his life.

Keywords:
countryside of São Paulo; journalism; publications; intellectual field; sociability networks