Conservation of the memory of works written by Brazilian women

Abstract

Research carried out with primary sources reveals the enormous difficulties of the lack of conservation of rare materials and, in this way, contributes to a reflection on the fragility of information recorded on paper. For a book to be considered a rare work, the main factors are those that take into account its historical and cultural value, that is, we must take into account the time in which it was published, the scarcity of known copies, its first editions and the first time a particular topic comes up. It is in this perspective that the work Direito das Mulheres e Injustiça dos Homens fits, which was published for the first time in 1832, in Recife. The translation made by Dionísia Gonçalves Pinto, or Nísia Floresta Brasileira Augusta, was for many years considered a translation of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), by Mary Wollstonecraft, however, in 1995, the scholar Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke reveals that, in fact, Floresta makes a literal translation of a pamphlet from 1739. In this way, Floresta founds the first known text on women's rights in Latin America. Despite the importance of this work, its lack of conservation raises the need for a debate on the conservation of the memory of the writers and their works.