CASTELLO BRANCO, CAMILLO, VISCONDE DE COR REIA BOTELHO (1825-189o), Portuguese novelist, was born out of wedlock and lost his parents in infancy. He spent his early years in a village in Traz-os-Montes. He learnt to love poetry from Camoens and Bocage, while Mendes Pinto gave him a lust for adventure, but he dreamed more than he read, and grew up un disciplined and proud. He took minor orders, but his restless nature prevented him from following one course for long and he soon returned to the world, and henceforth kept up a feverish literary activity to the end. He was created a viscount in 1885 in recognition of his services to letters, and when his health finally broke down he received a government pension. When, old and blind, he died by his own hand in 189o, it was recognized that Portugal had lost the most national of her modern writers. Apart from his plays and verse, Castello Branco's works may be divided into three sections. The first comprises his romances of the imagination of which Os mysterios de Lisboa, in the style of Victor Hugo, is a fair example. The second includes his novels of manners, a style of which he was the creator and remained the chief exponent until the appearance of 0 Crime de Padre Amaro of Eca de Queiroz. In these he is partly idealist and partly realist, and describes to perfection the domestic and social life of Portugal in the early part of the 19th century. The third division embraces his writings in the domain of history, biogra phy and literary criticism. Among these may be cited Noites de Lamego, Cousas leves e pesades, Cavar em ruinas, Memorias do Bispo do Grdo Para and Bohemia do Espirito.
Knowing the life of the people by experience and not from books, he was able to fix in his page a succession of strongly marked and national types, such as the brazileiro, the old fidalgo of the north, and the Minho priest. Among the most notable of his romances are 0 Romance de un Homem Rico, his favourite, Retrato de Ricardina, Amor de Perdicao, and the magnificent series entitled Novellas do Minho. Many of his novels are auto biographical, like Onde estci a felicidade, Memorias do Carcere and V inganca. No other Portuguese author has shown so pro found a knowledge of the popular language as Castello Branco. Though nature had endowered him with the poetic temperament, his verses are mediocre, but his best plays are cast in bold lines and contain really dramatic situations, while his comedies are a triumph of the grotesque, with a mordant vein running through them that recalls Gil Vicente.