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Books

The Jane Austen of Brazil

A review of The Diary of ‘Helena Morley’, translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop. A delightful, funny and revealing memoir of Brazilian teenage life in a 19<sup>th</sup> century mining town

9 August 2014

9:00 AM

9 August 2014

9:00 AM

The Diary of ‘Helena Morley’ translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop

Virago Modern Classics, pp.301, £8.99, ISBN: 9781844089937

When the American poet Elizabeth Bishop arrived in Brazil in 1951, she expected to spend two weeks there and ended up staying 15 years, a time of emotional turbulence and creative productivity. Bishop wrote poetry and prose and translated Latin American writers, including Octavio Paz, but this project, suggested by friends as a way to improve her Portuguese, is something completely different.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £8.54, Tel: 08430 600033. Miranda France is the author of Bad Times in Buenos Aires.

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