"We have a thousand bearable volumes"

notes on Camilo Castelo Branco's library

Abstract

Camilo collected, over more than 30 years of literary activity, thousands of books that he bought, kept, sold and donated. The use and influence of this library in the composition of his work and the description of Camilo's cultural profile based on his readings is a study that remains to be carried out. He auctioned his books in 1870 and 1883. The analysis of the catalogs of these auctions, with emphasis on the second, constitutes a first contribution to this study and to a reflection on the function of the personal libraries of nineteenth-century intellectuals, in a universe in which the printed word ‒ and above all, books ‒ were the most important means of communication, cultural expression and knowledge acquisition.