St Peter’s College Fellow and Tutor in Portuguese Dr Claire Williams and Isabel Cristina Mateus (University of Minho) have published a book collecting little-known texts by Portuguese writer Maria Ondina Braga (1923-2003). Biografias no Feminino (Imprensa Nacional, 2023) is the second volume of seven books presenting the complete works of one of twentieth-century Portugal’s most notable, and most widely travelled Portuguese writers and translators. Volume Two features biographies of women writers from around the world who inspired Braga, alongside book reviews and several previously unpublished cultural and political writings Braga contributed to magazines and newspapers at the time of the 1974 revolution in Portugal. Braga’s biographies, 22 in total, include portraits of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Selma Lagerlöf, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Teresa Margarida da Silva e Horta, Irene Lisboa, Sei Shonagon, Anaïs Nin, Violette Leduc, Carson McCullers, George Eliot, Maria Archer, Ana Plácido and Rosalía de Castro.
The book launch took place at the Museu Nogueira e Silva in Braga, Portugal, on January 12 2024, in the presence of the Mayor of Braga, with an introduction by journalist Helena Vasconcelos and university lecturer Margarida Pereira.
Dr Williams is Fellow and Tutor in Portuguese at St Peter’s and a member of the Sub-Faculty of Portuguese (Modern and Medieval Languages), where she is Associate Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture. In 2022, she co-edited a book focused on Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century (Legenda/MHRA, 2022).
Learn more about Dr Williams and her work here.
Images courtesy of Braga Cultura.