Reflexões sobre a vaidade dos homens, ou discursos moraes sobre os effeitos da vaidade.

Lisbon, Off. de Antonio Vicente da Silva, 1761.. 4°, contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt with raised bands in five compartments (lowest compartment defective; lettering piece and endleaves gone). Small woodcut vignette on title page. Woodcut headpiece with typographical border and woodcut initial on p. 1. Very small worm trace in upper outer blank margin of Y3-Bb1. In good condition. Contemporary ink inscription in upper blank margin of title page: "Ill.ma Sor [lightly scored] Jose Maria Lopo Cavalliero da // ordem de Christo Consul Deputado da Sicilia"; smaller inscription in a different hand just below in outer margin more heavily scored. Blue oval rubber stamp on recto of fifth preliminary leaf and on pp. 183 and 400 of "Pedro A. Ferreira // Porto // Abbade de Mirasaya". A few scattered penciled marginalia. (8 ll.), 400 pp. *** Second edition of this eighteenth-century masterpiece of prose—one of the few notable prose works written by a Brazilian in the second half of the eighteenth century—and forerunner of the modern novel of ideas. A native of São Paulo, Silva da Eça spent most of his adult life in Portugal. This work on the themes of Ecclesiastes is his principal work, and one of the few notable prose works written by a Brazilian during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The Reflexões first appeared in 1752; third and fourth editions came out in 1778 and 1786. In 1920 Solidonio Leite published a facsimile of the first edition, calling the public's attention to the literary significance of this forgotten classic and reestablishing Silva de Eça's reputation as a Brazilian man of letters. The text of this second edition is identical with that of the first from leaf B3 on, according to Borba de Moraes.Silva de Eça was the brother of Brazil's first woman novelist, Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, author of Aventuras de Diofanes, 1752.*** Borba de Moraes (1983) I, 284; Período colonial p. 127. Blake VI, 259. Innocêncio VI, 159; XVII, 15. Jong, Four Hundred Years of Brazilian Literature p. 54. JCB, Portuguese and Brazilian Books 761/1. NUC: MiU, MH; not listing the first edition, and locating the Lisbon, 1786 edition at TxU and NN.