Júlia Valentina da Silveira Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934) was a Brazilian author and considered to be the first woman to have achieved a national reputation in Brazil for her writing. Her works dealt with the abolitionist movement in Brazil.

Life

Lopes de Almeida was born in 24 September, 1862 in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

. She was daughter of the Visconde de São Valentim (in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 "Viscount of Saint Valentine"). Her career started in a newspaper of Campinas

Campinas

Campinas is a city and municipality located in the coastal interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. is the administrative center of the meso-region of the same name, with 3,783,597 inhabitants as of the 2010 Census, consisting of 49 cities....

, the Gazeta de Campinas, in 1881. That year brought several shifts to Brazilian literature

Brazilian literature

Brazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal, in 1822...

, namely the work Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas of Machado de Assis. Lopes de Almeida followed the new trends; however, her fame was ephemeral.

In Imperial Brazil, a woman that was dedicated to literature was seen with certain prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...

. In an interview conceded to João do Rio

João do Rio

João do Rio was the pseudonym of the Brazilian journalist, short-story writer and playwright João Paulo Emilio Cristóvão dos Santos Coelho Barreto, a Brazilian author and journalist of African descent...

 she said:

Her first article in Gazeta de Campinas was an article about theater. Although she was one of the first Brazilian women to write, she did not achieved the same success that European female authors had, like George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

 and Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

.

She married with the poet Filinto de Almeida. Her most famous works are Família Medeiros ("Medeiros Family") and A Herança ("The Heritage"), both psychological romances. But she also wrote children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

, specially between 1900 and 1917. Her main works for children were Histórias de nossa Terra ("Histories of our Land") and Era uma vez ("Once upon a time")
She came from a privileged background and supported the domestic elements of female life. Although she also emphasized the education of woman as better for the family and tried, but failed, to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Works

She had many works. Her novels were deeply influenced by the style of Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

 and by the Realism

Realism

Realism, Realist or Realistic are terms that describe any manifestation of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers, whether in philosophy itself or in the applied arts and sciences. In this broad sense it is frequently contrasted with Idealism.Realism in the...

. In children's literature, she was the first to write original stories in Brazil, since most of children-destined books were mere translations of European books. Her work has fallen into ostracism after the advent of Brazilian Modernism

Week of Modern Art

The Modern Art Week was an arts festival in São Paulo, Brazil, that ran from February 11 to February 18, 1922...

.

Novels

• A Família Medeiros ("Medeiros Family")
• Memórias de Marta ("Marta's Memoirs")
• A Viúva Simões ("Widow Simões")
• A Falência ("The Collapse")
• Cruel Amor ("Crude Love")
• A Intrusa ("The She-Intruder")
• A Silveirinha
• Pássaro Tonto ("Dizzy Bird")
• O Funil do Diabo ("Devil's funnel)

Short stories and novellas

• Ânsia Eterna ("Eternal Craving")
• A Isca ("The Bait")
• A caolha ("The one-eyed")

Children's literature

• Histórias da Nossa Terra ("Histories of our Land")
• Contos Infantis ("Children's short stories")
• A Árvore ("The Tree")