Sequira e Sá, Manoel Tavares de (ed.) — Angela do Amaral Ranga, et al. | Jubilos da America, a rare collection of works by Brazilian authors

Sequira e Sá, Manoel Tavares de (ed.) — Angela do Amaral Ranga, et al.

Jubilos da America, Na Gloriosa Exaltação do illustrissimo E Excellentissimo Senhor Gomes Freire de Andrada. Lisboa: Na Officina do Dor Manoel Alvares Sollano, 1754

4to (185 x 135 mm). Title in red and black, woodcut initials, tailpieces, and vignettes; page 191 misnumbered as 165, contemporary ink crosses in margins of a few leaves, leaves browned and foxing throughout. Late twentieth-century or early twenty-first-century antique sheepskin with triple-ruled gilt borders, spine gilt in five compartments with raised bands, red morocco label to second gilt-lettered, text block edges stained red; slight chips at bands.

First edition of a “Brazilian literary classic.”

Comprising the works from the Rio-based Academia dos Selectos, Jubilos da America features pieces in Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese by more than 30 Brazilian authors, many who were sparsely published elsewhere. Meeting only once in 1752 in celebration of Brazilian governor Gomes Freire de Andrada, its members comprised clergymen, historians, and accomplished military men. 

Jubilos features the work by one female author, Angela do Amaral Ranga, known as “Cegunha.” Born and writing in an era predating specialized education for the blind, Rangal’s “Romance” and sonnets within Jubilos are her only published works. In praise of de Andrada’s recent appointment to Captain of the Field Marshal, she writes: “Vivid edades Nestóreas / Gloria de Vuestro Brasil / O como el Ave de Arabia, / Que mucre para vivir. (May you live ages like Nestor / The Glory of your Brazil / Or like the birds of Arabia, / Which dies only to live again)" (273). 

REFERENCES

Azevedo-Samodães 3324; Borba de Moraes (1983) II, 759-60, and Período colonial 317-23; Innocêncio VI, 116; JCB, Portuguese and Brazilian Books 754/2; Maggs, Bibliotheca brasiliensis 223; Mindlin, Highlights 197; Rodrigues 2232, noting that copies are very difficult to find; Sabin 79186; Sacramento Blake VI, 204

PROVENANCE

António Tavares de Carvalho (pencilled notation on front pastedown)