Compiled by the rare book cataloguer Valeria Gauz, this work describes in detail, item by item, the finest collection in North America of books relating to Brazil before the country declared its independence from Portugal in 1822.

Nearly 650 of the titles in this catalogue antedate 1800. For the period from 1800 through 1822, some 500 titles are described, including 165 printed in Brazil itself after the Impressão Regia opened a branch in Rio de Janeiro in 1808 and presses began operating in Bahia.

Each of the approximately 1,300 titles catalogued in the book is annotated, some extensively, with historical and biographical information, and the major bibliographies of Luso-Brazilian printing, such as those by Rubens Borba de Moraes, are regularly cited. For libraries with significant colonial Braziliana holdings, this book is an essential reference work. Historians and other scholars, librarians, collectors, and booksellers will find it to be an invaluable aid to research in the field.

The arrangement of entries in the volume is chronological, from 1537 to 1839, and within each year the titles are listed alphabetically. The work is completely indexed by author and title, and there is a special index to government laws and decrees, a provenance list, and helpful bibliographical guides, including a general bibliography at the end that offers readers suggestions of other related works of interest. There are forty-six illustrations throughout the text.

Valeria Gauz has been a cataloguer at the National Library in Rio de Janeiro and was employed at the John Carter Brown Library from 1998 to 2005. The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities founded in 1846 and located on the campus of Brown University since 1901. The Library has unparalleled strength in primary sources relating to the history of North and South America between 1492 and ca. 1825.

Distributed in North America only for the John Carter Brown Library.