Customs of Madrid

Sebastião de Magalhães LimaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 142K words
Chapters: 15

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Costumes Madrilenos by S. de Magalhães LimaAuthor: Lima, S. de Magalhães (Sebastião de Magalhães), 1850-1928,Language: Portuguese, Class: DP: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Spain, Portugal, Release Date: Sep 15, 2009

Editor's review

Costumes Madrilenos means "Madrid Customs." The author, Magalhães de Lima, was a Portuguese writer of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the book is released by Project Gutenberg as a Portuguese electronic edition under the classification of Spanish and Portuguese history. Judging from the title, it centers on the customs and manners of Madrid and is a text of an observational, essayistic nature, offering readers an old record of urban life on the Iberian Peninsula. Its reading value lies mainly between ethnographic chronicle and literary style: it depicts everyday city life while also carrying the observational perspective of the author's era. For Chinese readers, it is better suited as Portuguese reading material or a supplementary cultural history text than as a travel guide or rigorous sociological work. While reading, pay attention to the details of daily life and the narrative tone, and understand them in light of background knowledge of Madrid's urban history; the electronic edition also makes it easy to excerpt by theme.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Spanish urban customs and the history of everyday life
Advanced learners of Portuguese who want to read essayistic texts
Chinese readers, teachers, and students studying Iberian Peninsula culture
Readers who enjoy the style of nineteenth-century customs writing

Not a good fit for

Travelers looking for a practical Madrid travel guide
Readers who know no Portuguese and need a Chinese translation
Readers expecting systematic sociological analysis or data-driven research

Reading tips

Read the table of contents and opening first to determine whether the text is essays or a thematic record of customs.
Note details involving places, food, and festivals as you read to form a list of customs.
Read alongside materials on Madrid's urban history to fill in the historical background.
Portuguese learners can choose short passages for translation practice and compare with their own understanding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can this book be used as a Madrid travel guide?

Not recommended. It is an old customs text reflecting observations from the author's era, not contemporary practical information such as transportation, accommodation, or attractions. For travel, it can only serve as supplementary cultural background reading.

What language foundation is needed to read it?

The original book is in Portuguese with no Chinese translation. Readers with intermediate or higher Portuguese reading ability are more suitable; beginners can read paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary, but progress will be slow.

Does this book belong to literature or history?

The available information classifies it under Spanish and Portuguese history, but the title "Customs" suggests it has the characteristics of essayistic and observational writing. It can be seen as a text between literature and customs chronicle rather than a strictly historical work.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Sebastião de Magalhães Lima Author · Portuguese · 1850–1928

Sebastião de Magalhães Lima (1850–1928) was a Portuguese lawyer, journalist, writer and politician, and an important figure in the Portuguese republican movement. Born in Rio de Janeiro, he founded and edited the newspaper O Século, and served as Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano masonic order from 1907 to 1928. His writings span political commentary, social customs and literary creation, with representative works including O congresso de Roma, Costumes Madrilenos, O Primeiro de Maio and Miniaturas Romanticas, as well as Paz e Arbitragem, O Federalismo and a tribute volume on José Estêvão; eight of his works are held in this collection. Public information is limited, but his subjects show a concern with republican politics, social reform, international peace and masonic affairs, and his argumentative yet documentary style gave him some influence in Portuguese public opinion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.