Viagem ao interior da Nova Hollanda, obra moral, critica e recreativa..

Rare: an unusually good copy of this intriguing imaginary voyage to Australia in the 1830s, and a most uncommon example of any utopian fiction published in Portugal.

Written at a time of unrest in the Portuguese-speaking world, and not coincidentally at a time when rumours of vast fortunes being made in Australia abounded, this story tells the detailed history of the manservant to a Lord who travelled from Liverpool to New South Wales in 1836, where he is dazzled by the beauties of nature and society alike, culminating in his visit to the utopian 'Vale da Razão' (Valley of Reason), run by a grand council of men and women 'free from the vices of the old world' (Ferguson).

The author was the little-known public servant Vasco José de Aguiar (died October 1855), secretary of the Conselho de Saude Publica do Reino (Public Health Board) in Lisbon with an interest in voyage literature; he also published a collection of stories under the title Verdades Sonhadas (True Dreams), which included an important piece of early science fiction. In the present work Aguiar breaks with tradition by stressing the fiction of the account in his introduction: perhaps he was made aware of the irony of publishing this glowing picture of Australian life just as the depression of the 1840s really started to bite.