O crime popular: publicidade literária e regeneração na Primeira República

This article is based in partial conclusions of our research about crime and delinquency in the nineteenth century Brazil. Making use of crime literature from the period as historical reference in our investigation, more specifically João do Rio’s work of fiction Memórias de um rato de hotel, this present article has the intention to comment the literature field in which this novel was published, admiring the popularity of crime as source of sensational novel and news report content. Simultaneously, we intend to notice some comments of the intellectual people, which influenced the republican regeneration project, about this literature and newspaper publishing logic, observing an “illness” condition that appears to be attached to this crime theme literary-newspaper works