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8°, original illustrated wrappers (slight wear), in folding case of marbled paper with gilt leather label on front of case. One large wood-engraved headpiece, one page printed in ochre and black. In good to very good condition. Author's signed and dated (May 1911) presentation inscription "A Columbano, // querido Amigo e // mestre, oferece" on recto of front free endleaf. (1 blank l.), 45 pp., (1, 1 blank l.), 1 color halftone illustration tipped onto bifolium of blue paper inserted between pp. 22-3. *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION of this play about a Franciscan friar set in fourteenth-century Italy, performed for the first time on April 5, 1911, at the Teatro da Republica, Lisbon. The color illustration by Thomás Bordallo Pinheiro is of the original stage design by Augusto Pina. Included is a one-page musical theme for oboe specially composed for the performance by the Portuguese composer Thomás Borba.Afonso Lopes Vieira (1878-1946) was Portugal's best traditional poet of the twentieth century. In 1916 he resigned his post as Redactor da Câmara dos Deputados in Lisbon in order to dedicate himself to reading and to poetry. His home, S. Pedro de Moel, became a haven for artists, musicians and writers. He also travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa, and reminiscences of these travels often appear in his works.The author's earliest published works were written as a student at Coimbra, 1897-1900, e.g., Para quê?, 1897, and Náufrago, 1898. From this melancholy phase he passed into a nationalistic one, in which he publicized early Portuguese literature, aiming to "reaportuguesar Portugal tornando-o europeau." During this period he helped prepare an edition of Camões (1928) and edited Montemayor's Diana, the Amadis, and Rodrigues Lobo. His Portuguese translation of the Poema do Cid was published in the periodical Lusitânia, of which Lopes Vieira served as secretary. He also wrote works for children, e.g, Animais nossos amigos, 1911, and Canto infantil, 1912.Provenance: Colombano Bordalo Pinheiro (1857-1929), one of the greatest and most original Portuguese painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See Pamplona Dicionário de pintores e esculptores portugueses (revised ed.), II, 111-22. He was a member of the "Grupo do Leão", which included a number of the most illustrious artists, writers, and intellectuals of the day, and his famous painting of some members of the group is now in the Museu de Arte Contemporânea in the Chiado, Lisbon.*** Innocêncio XXII, 23. Santos, Exposição bibliográfica de Afonso Lopes Vieira, p. 9. See Saraiva & Lopes, História da literatura portuguesa (17th ed., 2001), p. 961; Bell, Portuguese Literature, p. 337: "There is a certain strength as well as a subtle music about his verse which is of good promise for the future." Also Maria Amélia Gomes in Machado, ed., Dicionário de literatura portuguesa, pp. 501-2; Fernando Guimarães in Biblos, V, 844-6; and Dicionário cronológico de autores portugueses, III, 214-6. Porbase locates eight copies: three each at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and Biblioteca João Paulo II-Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and one each at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto and Biblioteca Tomás Ribeiro-Câmara Municipal de Tondela. Jisc repeats British Library only. NUC: TNJ, NCU, MH.
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