Recent Acquisitions - Richard C. Ramer Old & Rare Books

special list 165 129
146. RODRIGUES, Urbano Tavares. Os campos da promessa. [Évora]:
Ataegina—Associação de Produções Culturaes, 1998. Tall 12º, original
printed wrappers with dust jacket. A fine copy. Author’s nineteen-line
signed and undated (but giving New Year’s wishes for 1999; the colophon
states that the book was printed in November 1998) presentation
inscription on title page to Luís Manuel Monteiro Baptista, a close
friend. 71, (1) pp. $75.00
FIRST and apparently ONLY EDITION of this historical novella about Vasco da
Gama, set in the Alentejo.
Urbano Tavares Rodrigues (born Lisbon, 1923) grew up in Moura, in the Alentejo, in
a family of large landowners. Widely acclaimed and prolific author of fiction, researcher,
essayist, literary critic, professor Catedrático jubilado at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade
de Lisboa, member of the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, he is the winner of many
literary prizes and a militant communist. His earliest works were greatly influenced by
existentialism, in particular following the literary model of Albert Camus. Simultaneously
they display a certain Portuguese turn-of-the-century decadence, particularly influenced
by Fialho de Almeida (especially obsessive evocations of the Alentejo), António Patrício
and Manuel Teixeira Gomes, authors discussed by Urbano Tavares Rodrigues in critical
essays and later in his doctoral thesis.
Provenance: Luís Manuel Monteiro Baptista (1926-2009), distinguished Portuguese
physician and Communist Party militant, published a number of articles in
scientific journals.
j See Machado, Dicionário de literatura portuguesa, pp. 422-3. Cristina Robalo Cordeiro
in Biblos, IV, 909-13. Dicionário cronológico de autores portugueses, V, 296-8. Jacinto
Prado Coelho, ed., Dicionário de literatura (4th ed.), I, 203; II, 509; III, 954; Actualização, pp.
681-2. OCLC: 41649905 (14 copies). Porbse cites copies at the Biblioteca Pública Municipal
do Porto, Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Évora, and the Biblioteca Nacional
de Portugal. Copac locates copies at King’s College London, the British Library, and
Oxford University.
147. RODRIGUES, Urbano Tavares. Deriva. Mem Martins: Publicações
Europa-América, 1993. Colecção Século XX, 347. 8°, original illustrated
wrappers. A very good copy. Author’s nine-line signed (with the author’s
rubric) and dated (May 1993) presentation inscription on half title to
[Luís Manuel] Monteiro Baptista, a close friend. 179 pp., (5 pp. advt.).
$80.00
FIRST and apparently ONLY EDITION of this novella. It is one of the more significant
works of the third phase of the author’s fiction, marked by a more explicit manifestation
of revolutionary and post-revolutionary ideological conflicts.
Urbano Tavares Rodrigues (born Lisbon, 1923) grew up in Moura, in the Alentejo, in
a family of large landowners. Widely acclaimed and prolific author of fiction, researcher,
essayist, literary critic, professor Catedrático jubilado at the Faculdade de Letras, Universi-