Editorial data

Sol Nascente. Quinzenário de Ciência Arte e Crítica appeared in Porto on January 30, 1927 and saw its forty-fifth and last issue in the same city, on April 15, 1940.

The fact that at the time Dilermando Marinho was the only founder to have reached adulthood meant he became the editor and proprietor of the periodical, a task that he performed throughout its publication.

The director was Carlos F. Barroso, accompanied by Lobão Vital in the first four issues and J. Soares Lopes, until the twenty-sixth.

The remaining administrative and editorial positions proved very transient, and were even eliminated in the fifth issue, when half of its founders abandoned the periodical.

On this occasion, the improvised staff office was transferred from Rua do Paraíso, 56, in Porto, home of the couple Lobão Vital and Virgínia de Moura, to Rua do Bonjardim, 629, home of Manuel de Azevedo’s family (where it will remain for a long period of time, despite having moved to Rua Mártires da Liberdade, 160, between issues 32 and 37, and to no. 433, also on Rua do Bonjardim, in the last three appearances).

The early divergence within the staff, with unknown reasons, also led to the change of typesetting and printing company, which went from Tipografia Civilização, in Cedofeita, to the Oficinas de O Primeiro de Janeiro, in downtown Porto.

As of April 1939, a clearly programmatic second split explained the staff office’s request that correspondence be sent to Couraça de Lisboa, 38, in Coimbra.

Between the August 15, 1937 and January 15, 1938 issues, Sol Nascente announced a Bookshop Section.

Shortly thereafter, the Edições “Sol Nascente” published the collection of stories Ilusão na morte by Afonso Ribeiro, in 1938, and the poem Sinfonia da guerra by António Ramos de Almeida, in 1939. Next would come A mão de lobo, stories by Joaquim Namorado, O materialismo e a cultura, essays by Rodrigo Soares, and Aviso à navegação, poems also by Joaquim Namorado.

From then on, the biweekly periodicity that was followed until the middle of 1938 became very irregular, certainly due to the financial vicissitudes that the magazine was forced to overcome, mostly associated with the purchase of paper, which was separate from printing expenses, but also with the fact that a new editorial staff based in Coimbra took charge of its production.

The available data on the periodical’s reception are very sparse. According to Jorge Mendonça Torres, the copies destined for subscribers could fit in two travel suitcases. The global print run would be close to one thousand, as mentioned in the editorial commemorating the magazine's third anniversary. The Bertrand bookstore served not only as a point of sale but was also a distributor of the periodical.

The main documents of the process that led to Sol Nascente’s ban are now known and show that the Press Censorship Services were particularly sensitive to the articles on international affairs published in the magazine. Having failed to contain its content to cultural matters, in April 1940 the threat of prohibition was fulfilled, as implied in the suspension communication issued in mid-February.

Luís Andrade