José de Alencar

He put Brazil on the page in a Portuguese that was no longer Lisbon’s. Ceará, then law and newspapers in Rio, a seat in the Chamber, the Ministry of Justice. Novels of Peri and Iracema, of women priced in the capital, of the sertão and the pampas, plays, a quarrel with the Empire’s official poet. Cinco Minutos was the first serial. He died before the Republic. The language stayed.