Page:Brazilian tales.djvu/17

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PRELIMINARY REMARKS
13

fiction that Is worthy of standing beside María, Martin Rivas or José Marmol's exciting tale of love and adventure, Amalia. The growing importance of Brazil as a commercial nation, together with a corresponding increase of interest in the study of Portuguese (a language easily acquired by all who know Spanish) will have the desirable effect of making known to the English reading public a selection of works deserving of greater recognition.

Just to mention at random a few of the books that should in the near future be known to American readers, either in the original or through the medium of translations, I shall recall some of the names best known to Brazilians in connection with the modern tale and novel. If there be anything lacking in the array of modern writers it is a certain broad variety of subject and treatment to which other literatures have accustomed us.

It is not to be wondered at that in surroundings such as the Amazon affords an "Indian" school of literature should have arisen. We have an analogous type of fiction in United States literature, old and new, produced by similar causes. Brazilian "Indianism" reached its highest point perhaps