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| Editora Civilização Brasileira | |
|---|---|
| Name | Editora Civilização Brasileira |
| Founded | 1928 |
| Country | Brazil |
| Headquarters | Rio de Janeiro |
| Publications | Books |
| Topics | Literature, History, Philosophy, Social Sciences |
Editora Civilização Brasileira is a Brazilian publishing house based in Rio de Janeiro known for its role in 20th-century and 21st-century Brazilian letters, intellectual life, and translation projects. The press has influenced debates linked to Brazilian modernism, Latin American literary movements, European philosophy, and comparative literature, engaging with figures across politics, culture, and scholarship.
The publisher emerged amid the cultural ferment surrounding the Modern Art Week (Semana de Arte Moderna de 1922), interacting with contemporaries such as Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, and institutions like the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes and the Teatro Municipal (Rio de Janeiro). During the Vargas Era it navigated censorship contexts tied to the Estado Novo and intersected with intellectuals associated with the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Postwar engagements linked it to international networks including the UNESCO, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and publishing houses like Gallimard, Penguin Books, Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, and Cambridge University Press. The press participated in dialogues with Brazilian movements including Modernismo (Brazil), Tropicalismo, Concrete Poetry, Movimento Armorial, and intellectual circles around Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas.
Founded in the late 1920s, the house shared milieu with publishers such as Livraria José Olympio, Companhia Editora Nacional, Editora Globo, Editora Record, and Civilização Brasileira contemporaries in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Early catalogues featured translations of European authors like Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and editions of Brazilian authors including Machado de Assis, Joaquim Nabuco, Euclides da Cunha, Raul Pompeia, and Aluísio Azevedo. The firm weathered market shifts during the Great Depression, the World War II supply constraints, and the postwar boom that saw collaborations with bookstores such as Livraria Cultura, Saraiva, Companhia das Letras, and distributors like Distribuidora Record.
The catalog includes works by prominent Brazilian authors and intellectuals such as Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Cecília Meireles, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Manuel Bandeira, Graciliano Ramos, Raul Bopp, and Lygia Fagundes Telles. It also published translations or editions of international figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Homer, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Pablo Neruda. Scholarly titles involved historians and theorists such as Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre, Caio Prado Júnior, Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Roberto DaMatta, Raymundo Faoro, and Ernesto Laclau. Editions of classic texts included annotated volumes related to Brazilian Constitution of 1988 debates featuring legal scholars from Supremo Tribunal Federal deliberations.
Editorial programs encompassed literature, poetry, essays, classics, social theory, and translation series, often in conversation with series from Biblioteca Azul, Coleção Agir, Coleção L&PM Pocket, Pléiade, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, and academic series at Instituto Moreira Salles. The publisher curated critical editions, facsimile reprints, and annotated volumes similar to projects by Cambridge Classics, Oxford World's Classics, and Loeb Classical Library. It organized thematic collections on Modernism, Colonial Brazil, Abolitionism (Brazil), Independence of Brazil, Brazilian Republicanism, and studies on intellectual movements linked to figures such as Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre, Aníbal Machado, and Mário de Andrade.
Production practices reflected collaborations with typographers and designers influenced by Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Brazilian designers like Aldo Bonadei and Ruy Ohtake. Cover art and layout echoed conversations with visual artists including Tarsila do Amaral, Di Cavalcanti, Cândido Portinari, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Clark. Print runs and distribution engaged commercial partners such as Livraria Cultura, Saraiva, Amazon (company), Estante Virtual, and international rights exchanges with Faber and Faber, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Grupo Planeta, and Penguin Random House. Production moved from letterpress to offset lithography to digital print-on-demand in step with industry shifts seen at Penguin Books and HarperCollins.
The press influenced literary criticism appearing in periodicals like Revista do Brasil, Revista de História (USP), Veja, Piauí (magazine), O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo, and academic journals at University of São Paulo (USP), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV). Its editions were cited in debates on Brazilian Modernism, postcolonial studies, and comparative projects featuring institutions such as Casa de Rui Barbosa, Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Biblioteca Nacional (Brazil), and museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Critics and scholars like Antonio Candido, Roberto Schwarz, Lilia Schwarcz, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and Josemaría Peralta engaged with its publications.
Titles and authors in the catalog received national and international prizes including the Prêmio Jabuti, Prêmio Machado de Assis, Camões Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, Prêmio Oceanos, Prêmio Portugal Telecom, Prêmio São Paulo de Literatura, and honors from institutions like the Brazilian Academy of Letters and Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro. The publisher itself was acknowledged in cultural grants and support programs administered by Ministério da Cultura (Brazil), Fundo Nacional de Cultura, FUNARTE, and international cultural bodies such as UNESCO.
Category:Publishing companies of Brazil