Ramalhete apollineo, que as nove musas tecem de varias flores em nove assumptos, descubertos no nascimento do Serenissimo Infante o Senhor D. Joseph, dedicado a Elrey N.S.

Lisbon, Na Officina de Antonio Pedrozo Galram, 1714.. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 4°, disbound. Small typographical vignette on title page. Woodcut headpieces and initials. Typographical headpieces and tailpieces. Heading of preliminary leaf **ii slightly shaved on verso. All other pages with normal margins. In good to very good condition. (8 ll.), 36 pp. *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION of these poems celebrating the birth of the future king D. José. In addition to the sonnets, redondilhas, romances, etc. by Sousa de Almada in the main text, all in Portuguese, the preliminary leaves contain a 4 pp. dedication and a 2 pp. introduction by him, as well as poems in praise of him, including a neo-Latin epigram by Manuel Lopes de Carvalho, a neo-Latin sonnet by Caetano Alberto de Ossuna, a brief (4-line) neo-Latin epigram by Luís de Mello Coutinho e Castro, a sonnet in Portuguese by Henrique Jansen Moller, and 2 pp. of decimas in Portuguese by Luís Nunes Tinoco.Francisco de Sousa de Almada was born in 1676 in the freguesia de Aldeia Gavinha, near Alemquer. Innocêncio, unsure of the date of his death, says he appears to have been still alive in 1759. According to Barbosa Machado he had studied at Coimbra, but no faculty is mentioned, nor is it stated whether or not he received a degree. He produced several pamphlets of poetry, a Critica moral in 2 parts (1736), and a Thalia sacra (1740) with 4 plays, the first in Portuguese, and the other 3 in Spanish. He was a member of the Academy of the Aplicados, founded in 1722. The present work appears to be his earliest separately printed publication.*** Innocêncio III, 68 (without collation). Barbosa Machado II, 267-8. See also Grande enciclopédia II, 16. Porbase locates four copies: three in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, and one in the Biblioteca João Paulo II-Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Jisc repeats British Library only. NUC: ICN, LNT.