Abstract
Machado de Assis was a chronicler between the 1860s and 1890s, and his relationship with the chronicle changed over the course of this career. He used hundreds of texts published in newspapers to make comments in a variety of ways on many subjects, such as labour, slavery, and immigration. The aim of this article is to show that the author's literary strategies adopted in the chronicle series entitled "Notas Semanais" (1878) and "Balas de Estado" (1883-1886), as well as the configuration of fictional narrators in these works, are fundamental elements for understanding the testimony of the transition from chattel slavery to "free labour" left by the writer.
Machado de Assis; chronicle; labour