Carolina Nabuco


Carolina Nabuco, born Maria Carolina Nabuco de Araújo, was a Brazilian writer and translator.
In 1978, Carolina received the Machado de Assis Award, from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, for her work as a whole.

Life

Carolina was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in 1890. She was the daughter of Evelina Torres Ribeiro Nabuco and Joaquim Nabuco, writer, diplomat and general deputy of the Empire of Brazil, co-founder of the Brazilian Academy of Letters She spent her childhood in Petrópolis, and her adolescence in the United States, where her father was an ambassador for Brazil.
In 1928, she published her first book, the biography of her father, Joaquim Nabuco, awarded with the Essay Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. She worked as a translator and writer.

''A Sucessora'' and ''Rebecca''

In 1934 she published the novel A Sucessora. The novel was involved in a controversy scandal, after the release of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, dealing with the latter's supposed plagiarism of Nabuco's book. Nabuco was accused of plagiarizing the novel Encarnação by Brazilian author José de Alencar, when she wrote A Sucessora, however both books have a similar plot to Jane Eyre.
Following the release of the film version of Rebecca, the New York Times Book Review published an article highlighting the similarities between the two novels. prompting an immediate rebuttal from du Maurier in a letter to the editor.
No one suggests that du Maurier could read Brazilian Portuguese, so the case that she was influenced by Nabuco's novel rests on her having access to the Brazilian author's manuscript translations of A Sucessora into English and French, which Nabuco and her champions say she submitted to publishers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, although neither was ever published. Different sources speculate that du Maurier was given access to both the English and French translations in identical but unconnected circumstances. No evidence has been produced to support this.
Though there were repercussions in Brazil, Nabuco did not consider suing the English publishers. Nabuco says that when the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca was released in Brazil, United Artists' lawyers approached her to sign a term agreeing that there had been "coincidence", but Nabuco refused.
This information, declared by Carolina herself in her memoirs, corrects a mistake by the writer Nelly Novaes Coelho, who states, in her Dicionário Crítico de Escritoras Brasileiras , that Carolina would have sued the English writer for plagiarism.
A Sucessora was adapted as a telenovela, in 1978, written by Manoel Carlos and aired on TV Globo.

Death

Carolina died on August 18, 1981, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, at 91, due to a cardiac arrest.

Works

A Vida de Joaquim Nabuco A Sucessora Chama e Cinzas Meu Livro de Cozinha O Ladrão de Guarda-Chuva e Dez Outras Histórias Oito décadas Santa Catarina de Siena Virgílio de Melo Franco