A Parisian in Brazil: The Travel Account of a Frenchwoman in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Latin American Silhouettes)

In an effort to improve their family's fortune, enterprising and highspirited young Parisian Adèle Toussaint-Samson traveled with her husband from France to Brazil in the mid 1800s. While there, she wrote of her experiences, painting a vivid and detailed portrait of the reality of slavery, gender relations. and daily life in mid-nineteenth century Brazil.

The introduction to a carefully annotated re-edition of this tale not only puts the book into the context of Brazilian history, including questions of gender relations and of slavery, but also confronts such problems as who the author really was and precisely where and when many events occurred, illuminating the nature of historical research.