Garrett, seeking to reinvigorate drama, found he had to create anew the plays, actors, and audience of Portuguese theatre despite its revival during the 18th century. With Um auto de Gil Vicente (1838; “An Auto by Gil Vicente”), O alfageme de Santarém (1841; “The Swordsmith of Santarém”), and especially Frei Luís de Sousa (1843; Brother Luiz de Sousa), he produced a national theatre on historical themes. João da Camara inherited the theatre that Garrett created and became Portugal’s outstanding dramatist at the end of the 19th century with such works as Afonso VI (1890), Rosa enjeitada (1901; “Rose Abandoned”), and Os velhos (1893; “The Old Ones”).

As Garrett was in poetry and drama, Alexandre Herculano was Portugal’s chief exponent of Romanticism in prose. Herculano returned from exile in England and France—the result of his involvement in an army revolt in 1831 and his political liberalism—with an enthusiasm for the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott that prompted him to launch the historical romance in Portugal with such novels as Eurico, o presbítero (1844; “Eurico, the Presbyter”) and Lendas e narrativas (1851; “Legends and Narratives”). Garrett himself also attempted to modernize the Portuguese novel; in Viagens na minha terra (1846; Travels in My Homeland) he used the models provided by Irish-born English novelist Laurence Sterne and French author Xavier de Maistre. Many, however, preferred to follow the lead of Herculano, including Oliveira Marreca, Arnaldo Gama, and Pinheiro Chagas. Popular successes among historical novels were A mocidade de D. João V (1852; “The Youth of D. João V”) by Luís António Rebelo da Silva and Um ano na côrte (1850–51; “A Year in the Court”) by João de Andrade Corvo.

The 19th century was the great age of the novel, and among the most prominent novelists of the era were Camilo Castelo Branco, Júlio Dinis (pseudonym of Joaquim Guilherme Gomes Coelho), and especially José Maria de Eça de Queirós, one of the greatest authors of the European realist novel. Castelo Branco was a master of language and of dramatic, or melodramatic, plot, while Dinis depicted country life, as in As pupilas do Senhor Reitor (1867; “The Pupils of the Dean”). Eça de Queirós, who wrote his portraits of strata of Portuguese society chiefly while living in England and France, treated figures of national life with realist irony and as part of a sweeping panorama. His masterpiece is Os Maias (1888; The Maias), a portrait of three generations of a Portuguese family.

Studies in history and literature

With his magnum opus, the História de Portugal (1846–53; “History of Portugal”), and with the História da origem e estabelecimento da Inquisição em Portugal (1854–59; “History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal”), Herculano established himself as a leader of the Portuguese historians of his day, among whom are Simão José da Luz Soriano (on constitutionalism), Luís António Rebelo da Silva (on the period of Spanish rule under the Philips), and José Maria Latino Coelho (on the dictatorship of Sebastião de Carvalho, marquis of Pombal). Henrique da Gama Barros and António de Sousa Silva Costa Lobo followed Herculano on early historical and political topics. The works of Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins demonstrated psychological imagination, a notable capacity for general ideas, and a gift of picturesque narration. He left in his numerous writings a vast portrait gallery of the great figures of his country, particularly in the Portugal contemporaneo (1881; “Contemporary Portugal”).

Literary study flourished in the second half of the century, in the studies of medieval literature by Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, in Braga’s history of Portuguese literature (1869–72), and in the philological studies of Adolfo Coelho, Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, and José Leite de Vasconcellos.