Cartas Públicas (review)

Cartas Públicas is the first of two volumes dedicated to Eça de Queirós’ letter writing and a valuable contribution to the critical edition series of Eça’s work coordinated by Carlos Reis. Ana Teresa Peixinho’s careful editorial work of this collection of seventeen letters has the merit of making accessible for the first time the letters that Eça wrote for publication and that he addressed to certain prominent members of society. The edition consists of a brief preface, an extensive and very informative introduction, the chronological corpus of the seventeen public letters, and a bibliography.

Other than the importance of the letters published in this volume and that are well-annotated by the editor, the introduction of the edition is particularly note-worthy. Peixinho’s thorough introduction provides an overview of epistolary writing in the late 19th century and discusses in detail the importance of the public letter form for Eça de Queirós. The introduction is divided into seven different sections that explore the “open letter” as a literary genre in general terms and more specifically in relation to Eça de Queirós. In Part 1 Peixinho explains how the literary form of the open letter enabled Eça to participate in public debates and presented a fragmented view of his literary, political and societal opinions. As Peixinho demonstrates these open letters are essential to understanding how Eça interacted with his contemporaries and constitute a privileged means to some of Eça’s most controversial ideas. Part 2 covers the different subgenres of the “open letter,” and how in Eça’s case these texts were intended for public readership despite the appearance of being explicitly destined for a particular addressee. Eça’s letters can be divided into two main categories: those written to be published in newspapers and addressed to the editor in chief or to someone Eça was engaging in written debate or argument, and four that were written to be published as prefaces to literary works. In Part 3 of the introduction, Peixinho focuses on the letters written to newspaper editors that are formal in nature and exemplify Eça’s need to rectify falsehoods or accusations against him as circulated in the press. Peixinho’s knowledge of the last half of the 19th century is apparent in the carefully constructed analysis of the historical context of these letters. The next part of the introduction analyzes the letters published as prefaces to literary works. Peixinho discusses the content of these preface-letters and provides a theoretical analysis of the aesthetics, structure and background of these letters. An interesting point is Peixinho’s perspicacious reading of Eça’s understanding of the patronage function of the preface, that inevitably links the author of the preface to the author of the book it introduces, and discusses the care with which Eça wrote these epistolary-prefaces in order to show fragments of his aesthetic ideas and his doctrinal reflections on key-themes that enable the reader to reconstruct his aesthetic ideology. Part 5 of the introduction provides an overview of Eça’s polemic letters which constitute five of the corpus here under consideration. Peixinho discusses Eça’s argumentative and well-planned responses to issues relating to literary themes of the period (Naturalism, Idealism) and institutional affairs and shows how these letters reflect Eça’s need to make his ideological position clear while at the same time projecting a carefully-planned public image of himself. In this section, as throughout the introduction, Peixinho weaves pertinent aspects of Eça’s biography into the discussion while also discussing Eça’s colloquial style. At times this part of the discussion might seem repetitive of other sections of the introduction, however throughout the focus is on clarity. The sixth part focuses on the “portrait-letters” that Eça wrote about two important public figures, [End...