[PRINTING]. D. JOÃO, Prince Regent of Portugal (later D....

Decreto da instituição da nova Junta.

(Lisbon, na Regia Officina Typografica, 1801). Caption title below woodcut royal arms of Portugal. (3 pp.) Folio, disbound. A very good copy. FIRST EDITION. Makes additional provisions for the administration of the Impressão Regia, created in 1768. Among those appointed to administrative duties are the Brazilians Fr. José Mariano da Conceição Veloso and Hippolyto José da Costa, as literary directors; until very recently, both had been working at the Arco do Cego press. This decree states that the Impressão Regia will absorb the Casa Literaria do Arco do Cego, that it will continue to publish the sort of books that the Arco do Cego had published, including Veloso's botanical works, and that the artists hired by the Arco do Cego will continue to be employed. Two other literary directors are mentioned, Custodio José de Oliveira and Joaquim José da Costa e Sá. The Director Geral of the Impressão Regia was to be Domingos Monteiro de Albuquerque e Amaral, with João Guilherme Cristiano Muller and Alexandre Antonio das Neves as secondary directors. The printer Simão Thaddeo [Ferreira?] was named Administrator.The Arco do Cego press (officially the Tipografia Chalcografica, Tipoplastica e Literaria, located in Lisbon at the Arco do Cego), was established in 1800 at the insistence of D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, Minister of State, who realized the need to spread information on new techniques in the arts, industry and agriculture in Portugal and Brazil. He proposed to do this by publishing both original works and Portuguese translations of recent foreign works on those subjects. The director of the press (and author of the @Relação) was José Mariano da Conceição Veloso (1742?-1811), a native of Minas Geraes and a noted botanist; he was assisted by many young Brazilians living in Lisbon. The Arco do Cego was well equipped, with its own foundry for making type, its own presses and its own designers and engravers, two of whom—Romão Eloy and Ferreira Souto—later introduced the art of engraving to Brazil. The press produced a relatively large number of works, but in 1801 it was incorporated into the Regia Oficina Typografica, also known as the Impressão Regia and then later as the Imprensa Nacional.Hipolyto José da Costa [Furtado de Mendonça] (1774-1823), a Brazilian born in Colonia do Sacramento (now in Uruguay) who earned degrees in philosophy and law from Coimbra, came to the United States (1798-1801) to study agriculture and bridge construction for the Portuguese government, then visited England. When he returned to Portugal, full of the liberal ideas he had heard during his travels, he was imprisoned as a Freemason and an opponent of the monarchy. He escaped and fled to England in 1805, where several years later he began publishing the enormously influential @Correio Brasiliense. After Brazilian independence was declared in 1822, he was appointed Brazilian consul general in England by D. Pedro I but died before he could assume the post.Custodio José de Oliveira (d. 1812) was appointed professor of Greek at the Colégio Real dos Nobres in 1771. The Greek dictionary for which he was given a pension remained incomplete at his death, and was never published. Oliveira was also appointed one of the Directores Litterarios of the Impressão Regia, serving until 1807. In that capacity he prepared the @Diagnosis typografica dos caracteres gregos, hebraicos, e arabigos (1804), a handbook to the proper setting of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic texts for the compositors of the Impressão Regia. He also wrote a text for students of Greek and a few works on Greek authors. Joaquim José da Costa e Sá (ca. 1740–1803), a native of Lisbon, taught Latin language and grammar for most of his life. João Guilherme Cristiano Muller (i.e. Johann Wilhelm Christian Müller, 1752–1814), served as the royal censor of books and was a member as well as secretary of the Real Academia das Sciencias, Lisboa. Robert Southey met and befriended him during his second visit to Lisbon in 1800, and Müller subsequently translated into Portuguese Southey's May 1809 @Quarterly Review essay on Portuguese literature. Müller came to Portugal in 1772 as Lutheran chaplain to the Dutch colony, entered the Portuguese civil service in 1790, and converted to Catholicism in 1791. On Veloso and the Arco do Cego press, see Innocêncio V, 54 & 452 and XIII, 122; Borba de Moraes (1983) II, 894-95 & 902; and Soares, @História da gravura artística em Portugal I, 25–7. Not located in NUC.

• USD 300.00 > Andere Währungen
• Bestellnummer: 23196

• Antiquariat: Richard C. Ramer (USA)