To the Capital

Description

'To the Capital' is Eca de Queiros's seventh novel. Written at the end of his life, the novel remained unpublished for 25 years until Eca's son prepared and published the first edition in 1925.

Eca de Queiros was born in 1843 at Povoa de Varzim in north Portugal. His father was a magistrate; he studied law at Coimbra. After travelling widely he entered the diplomatic service. Married, he became a devoted family man, a good host, a wit, a raconteur, dandy, aesthete, bon viveur. He served as consul in Havana, Newcastle, Bristol and Paris, where he died in 1900. He began his career writing travel articles, short stories and essays, before publishing his early novels, 'The Sin of Father Amaro' (1876) and 'Cousin Bazilio' (1878). Having won critical recognition with these early works, de Queiros firmly established his growing reputation with his 1886 novel, 'The Maias'. His later novels, notably 'The Illustrious House of Ramires'(1900) and 'The City and the Mountains'(1901), witnessed a shift in narrative focus from the hypocrisies of fashionable, urban society to a rural climate of liberal reform. Yet it is his enjoyment of everyday life, his insights into character, his sense of the unpredictability of individual destiny which give his work their vibrancy and contemporaneity.