The Seventeenth International Conference on Books, Publishing & Libraries

Abstract

In this study attention is paid to &etc, a small independent literary publishing house based in Lisbon, that began publishing books on the eve of the Carnation Revolution, and which was not “just another case” in the Portuguese literary publishing scene of the last four decades. Having ceased its activity in 2015 (following the death of Vitor Silva Tavares, the publisher and alma mater of &etc), it showed a set of traits - return to certain forms of craftsmanship and knowledge; refusal of a purely mercantile relationship with books; promotion of marginal literary discourses and association with specific aesthetic groups; but also the inspiring character it has had for other small/non-mainstream publishers - which compel sociology to consider it. Broadly speaking, the purpose, here, is to underline some analytical concerns and concepts (singularity, biography) mobilized to understand, both historically and sociologically, the practice of &etc, thus contributing to a better knowledge of the literary publishing field in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Portugal.