"Lembrança de Getúlio Vargas

IN MEMORY OF GETÚLIO COSTAGetúlio Moreira da Costa played an important role in publishing books in the first half of the last century. Since his youth he was attracted to these activities, having founded some little publishing houses in S.Paulo, like Editora Popular and Rochea. Then he worked for Monteiro Lobato and Octales Marcondes Ferreira at Companhia. Editora Nacional in São Paulo, which he left in 1931 to go to Rio de Janeiro and found the Livraria Civilização Brasileira. He went to Lisbon where he founded the Livros do Brasil, which distributed books of the Civilização and the Nacional. Both houses were later sold to the Companhia Editora Nacional. In 1938 he founded The Editora Getulio Costa which lasted until 1950 and  also published a great deal of books of important poets, novelists and essaysts, like Jorge de Lima, Ribeiro Couto, Malba Tahan, Viriato Correia, Alceu Amoroso Lima, Gustavo Barroso, etc. His passion for books and his view of them as means of man improvement and happiness brought him no few problems, including some imprisonments. He was a pioneer in publishing books in Brazil, since during the first two decades of the twentieth  century, most of the important Brazilian authors, like Machado de Assis and Coelho Neto, had their works published in Portugal. This article deals with some biographical information of Getulio Costa, his activities of publisher and businessman, his efforts to develop reading in Brazil and some aspects of his optimistic view of life.