The story of how a boy from a poor family in Grimsby got lost in Brazil and became a gaucho.
The Gringo Gaúcho: A Victorian Boy in Rio Grande do Sul | Stephen Basdeo
Dr Stephen Basdeo
Stephen Basdeo is a historian and writer based in Leeds, UK. He is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and popular history books.
Camilo Castelo Branco’s ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ (1854): Chapter Five | [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
My soul was covered in a veil of perpetual sadness in the moment in which I read my mother’s letter. Yet I will not, as Job did, date the hour of the commencement of my misfortunes since the time of my birth.
Popular Tales from Rio Grande do Sul [Contos Populares do Sul] | Stephen Basdeo [Trans.]
One day, however, according to the will of Tupã, the warrior chief became sick and passed away. It was a moment of much pain for all but, after some time, the village elders met to choose, from among the greatest warriors, the new chief. And what luck—the new chief was Obirici’s crush: Itiberê!
‘The earth trembled and shook’: The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 | Stephen Basdeo
“This extensive and opulent city is now nothing but a vast heap of ruins … Earth’s womb was heard to groan with hollow roar, The dwellings tumbled, but men trembled more.”
Camilo Castelo Branco’s ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ (1854): Chapter Four | [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
A man of frightful figure looked at us with a choleric eye. The priest looked directly at him for a moment without moving so much as a muscle, simulating the best feigned indifference I ever saw. He did not forbid me to look at that man—perhaps he thought we would be less suspicious.
The Apocalypse in the Eighteenth Century | Stephen Basdeo
The CONFLAGRATION, to which a new face of Nature will accordingly succeed, New Heavens and a New Earth, Paradise renew’d, and so it is called the restitution of things, or Regeneration of the World’
“Allegory to Independence” at the Museu de Arte do Rio | Stephen Basdeo
The creator is unknown, though the tapestry is small and simple enough to indicate that it was produced by a commoner. The celebration of independence is not coherent, of course, for the Brazilian monarch guides his country in the direction of that taken by the North American republic of the United States.
Mysteries of the Court of Miracles | Stephen Basdeo
“The blind man ran. The lame man ran. The man with no legs ran. And then, as he penetrated further down the street, the legless, the blind and the halt came swarming around him, together with the one-armed, the one-eyed, and the lepers with their sores….”
The Mystery of Susannah F. Reynolds | Robert J. Kirkpatrick
Despite the best efforts of researchers such as Dick Collins, her true identity and background have never been established. All the available records give us is that she says she was born in London in around 1819. We know that she married Reynolds in 1835, but this was not her first marriage – she had married another man three years previously.
Final Issue of “Reynolds’s News and Sunday Citizen” (1967) | Bill Richardson
“…liberty, democracy, equality, and social justice, the brotherhood of man, they are eternal ideals, and other newspapers will yet be born to speak out for them.”
The Life of Edwin F. Roberts | Robert J. Kirkpatrick
Edwin F. Roberts had a 16-year career as a prolific and versatile writer of short stories, serials and articles, and for many years was closely associated with G.W.M. Reynolds. Yet he is now a totally forgotten figure.
Camilo Castelo Branco’s ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ (1854): Chapter Three | [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
And yet my position was already different in the little society I knew. A new lease of life was given to me—a new freedom—more attention was shown to me—I was even placed in a new room! What was all this for? Why wouldn’t D. Antonia, whom I asked with childish idiocy, tell me wherefore? The priest didn’t tell me, but then I wouldn’t have the audacity to ask him.
Disorder and Progress: Antonio O Conselheiro’s Rebellion in the Sertão and the Holy City of Canudos | Stephen Basdeo
“The reign of God was nigh. He will descend in majesty and might, confound His enemies, and destroy the impious republic; cast down the mighty from their seats; exalt the sufferers, the poor—His poor—and burn up those who had refused to come and listen to His Counsellor.”
Álvares de Azevedo and the Transformation of Romantic Literature | Stephen Basdeo
“Brazil is founded on genius”–so wrote Dr Monteiro in 1853. One of the nation’s geniuses was a young poet named Alvares de Azevedo who wanted to revolutionize his country’s idea of romanticism.
New York in the Nineteenth Century: Illustrations from the life of George McWatters’s “Knots Untied” (1871)
At a time when Henry Mayhew ventured like an explorer into the ‘darkest’ parts of London to publish London Labour and the London Poor (1851), social investigators such as Jacob A. Riis and Helen Campbell did the same for New York city. And just as French policemen such as Vidocqu published their recollections of their time in the police—a book which inspired the characters of Jean Valjean and Javert in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables—so too did one Scottish-American detective, named George McWatters, publish his memoir of policing.
“Macário” (1850)—Scene I | Álvares de Azevedo [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
“Virginity is an illusion! What is more virginlike? She who is deflowered while sleeping? Or the nun who, with burning tears, tosses and turns in her bed and breaks her finger through her habit while reading some impure romance?”
Camilo Castelo Branco’s ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ (1854): Chapter Two | [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
“For the first time in my life the desire for vengeance erupted inside me. The closest thing to me was a small vase. It had a cactus in it—thorny like a cedar tree. I took the vase. I hit him in the face with it. “
Robin Hood, Joseph Ritson (1752–1803) e a Revolução Francesa | Stephen Basdeo
“Um homem que, em uma era bárbara e sob uma tirania complicada, demonstrou um espírito de liberdade e independência.”
Post-Apocalyptic Medievalism: Richard Jefferies’s “After London” (1885) | Stephen Basdeo
“Society was held together by brute force, intrigue, cord and axe, and woman’s flattery. But a push seemed needed to overthrow it. Yet it was quite secure, nevertheless, as there was none to give that push.”
Álvares de Azevedo’s “Pedro Ivo” | Leandro Machado [Trans.]
The corpse without blessings, unburied,
Thrown to the crows of the uncultivated grassland,
The manly forehead shot through,
To imperial sleep with cold lips
May pass in faded scorn.
The Emperor and the Author: Victor Hugo’s Meeting with Dom Pedro II | Stephen Basdeo [Trans.]
“I have power by virtue of chance; I must be employed in doing good. Progress and Liberty!” Such were the words which came of the mouth of the Emperor of Brazil on meeting the 1800s’ most venerable author, Victor Hugo.
Camilo Castelo Branco’s ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ (1854): Chapter One | [Trans. Stephen Basdeo]
“It has always seemed impossible to me to write the mysteries of a land that has none, and, invented, nobody believes them. I was wrong. It is because I did not know Lisbon, or not able to calculate the power of a man’s imagination.”
‘Bred up a butcher’: The meat trade and eighteenth-century criminality
“John Hewlet was born in Warwickshire, the son of Richard Hewlet, a butcher, and though not bred up with his father, he was yet bred to the same employment at Leicester, from which, malicious people said he acquired a bloody and barbarous disposition.”
Youthful consumption and conservative visions: Robin Hood and Wat Tyler in late Victorian penny periodicals | Stephen Basdeo
“Talk of Robin Hood and Little John, and their dingy imitators in this metropolis described by Dickens and Ainsworth … The same man passes from one form into another – developing, according to the changes in society, from a forester to a mountaineer, thence to a highwayman, thence to an instructor of pickpockets and the receiver of their day’s work in St. Giles.”