Academia Brasileira de Letras

The initiative to establish the Academy was taken by Lúcio de Mendonça and was realised in preparatory meetings that began on December 15, 1896, under the presidency of Machado de Assis. The statuses of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the membership of the 40 founding fathers were approved at these meetings, on January 28, 1897. On July 20 of the same year, the inaugural session was held at the Pedagogium's facility in the centre of Rio de Janeiro.

Without appointed headquarters or financial resources, the solemn meetings of the academy were held at the hall of the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, at the premises of the former National Gymnasium and at the Noble Hall of the Ministry of the Interior. The joint sessions were held at the law firm of Rodrigo Octávio, the Academy's first secretary's, at Quitanda Street, 47.

In 1904, the academy obtained the left wing of the Brazilian Silogeo, a governmental building that housed other cultural institutions. It remained there until moving to its own headquarters in 1923.

The Petit Trianon in Rio de Janeiro, the seat of the academy since 1923.

In 1923, thanks to the initiative of its president at the time, Afrânio Peixoto and of the then-French ambassador, Raymond Conty, the French government donated the French Pavilion building to the Academy. The building had been built for the Independence of Brazil's Centenary International Exposition by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel, between 1762 and 1768 and was a replica of the Petit Trianon of Versailles.

These facilities have been inscribed as Brazilian Cultural heritage since November 9, 1987 by the State Institute of Cultural Heritage (INEPAC), of the Municipal Secretary of Culture of Rio de Janeiro. To the present day, its halls continue to host regular meetings, solemn sessions, commemorative meetings and inauguration sessions of the new academics, as well as the traditional Thursdays' tea. They are also open to the public for guided tours or for special cultural programs, such as chamber music concerts, book launches, conference cycles and theatre plays.

In the buildings' first floor hall stands the decorated marble floor, a French crystal chandelier, a large white porcelain vase from Sèvres and four English bas-reliefs. Inside the building, the following premises stand out:

• the Noble Hall, where the solemn sessions take place;
• the French Hall, where the new members traditionally remain alone, in reflection;
• the Francisco Alves Room, where an oil painting on canvas of a collective of nineteenth-century writers and intellectuals, by the painter Rodolfo Amoedo, is depicted;
• the Hall of the Founders, decorated with period furniture and paintings by Candido Portinari;
• the Machado de Assis Room, decorated with the writer's desk, books and personal belongings, such as portrait by painter Henrique Bernardelli;
• the Hall of Romantic Poets, which holds bronze busts of Castro Alves, Fagundes Varela, Gonçalves Dias, Casimiro de Abreu and Álvares de Azevedo, by Brazilian-Mexican sculptor Rodolfo Bernardelli.

On the second floor, one can find the Sessions Room, the Library the Tea Room. The Tea Room is the academics' meeting point before the Plenary Session, on Thursdays. The Library is used by scholars and researchers and holds a collection of Manuel Bandeira.

The Dictator Getúlio Vargas being invested as member of the academy in 1943.

During periods like the Vargas' totalitarian dictatorship or the Brazilian military government, the academy's neutrality in choosing proper members dedicated to the literary profession was compromised with the election of politicians with few or no contributions to literature, such as ex-president and dictator Getúlio Vargas in 1943.[1] The Academy is also accused of not having defended culture expression and freedom of speech during both Vargas' Era and during the Military dictatorship. Both of these ruling periods imposed heavy censorship on Brazilian culture, including Brazilian literature.[1]

The writer Fernando Henrique Cardoso, ex-President of Brazil, taking possession as a member of the academy in 2013.

Thanks to revenues over $4 million a year, the academy is financially stable. It owns a skyscraper with 28 floors (Palácio Austregésilo de Athayde) in the centre of Rio, which the academy rents for office space, generating 70% of its current revenue. The rest comes from rental of other buildings, which were inherited from book editor Francisco Alves, in 1917, and from other financial investments. This comfortable situation allows the payment of a "jeton" to each academician.

The academy annually awards several literary prizes:

• the Prêmio Machado de Assis, the most important literature prize in the country, awarded for lifework;
• the ABL prizes for poetry, fiction, drama, essays, history of the literature and for children's literature;
• the José Lins do Rego prize, an extraordinary commemorative prize awarded in 2001
• the Afonso Arinos prize, an extraordinary commemorative prize awarded in 2005.

The academy also publishes a literary periodical, the Brazilian Review (Revista Brasileira), with quarterly editions.

The members of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (June 2019):[3]

• Machado de Assis
• Jorge Amado
• José Guilherme Merquior
• Tobias Barreto
• Zélia Gattai