4: A Network of Women Writers Articulated through Letters and The Periodical Press in Goa, Brazil and Portugal

This paper aims to study some of the letters that are part of the Espólio Osório de Castro (N12), maintained by the National Library of Portugal, and the Fundo da Federação Brasileira para o Progresso Feminino, maintained by the Brazilian National Archive (Fundo FBPF), and map how an intellectual network was established between the writers Maria Ermelinda dos Stuarts Gomes (1889-1937), from Goa, India; Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935), Sarah Beirão (1880-1974) and Adelaide Cabette (1867-1935), from Portugal; and Bertha Lutz, Maria Lacerda de Moura and Avelina de Sousa Salles, from Brazil. The analysis of these letters indicate that not only did these women unite in associations that encouraged actions in favour of obtaining women's rights but they also discussed projects that propagated women´s emancipation. Hence, they formed networks to publish their articles in newspapers and magazines, such as the Goan Heraldo and O Mascotte; the Portuguese A Semeadora, Sociedade Futura e Alma Feminina, and the Brazilian Revista Feminina. These letters were a privileged means to exchange contacts and bibliography, to strengthen feminist associations and to point out which periodicals would be more suitable to publish these women´s texts and to transmit their ideas, establishing an intercontinental intellectual network connecting Portuguese-speaking women writers in India, Brazil and Portugal.