The historical archive of SHE
The library
The bibliographic collection of Sociedade Harmonia Eborense is, in a memorial logic, one of the most relevant assets in the Association. To all intents and purposes, it preserves a very rich set of documents of various types, dispersed in various backgrounds, assuming itself as a documentary and literary corpus that has followed the course of the Association since its origins, with a particular increase between the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, until the advent of the New State.
A dispersed, non-systematized and precariously conditioned set up until the beginning of the 21st century had a number of preservation actions, in particular its inventory, with the recent Directorates, providing its organization under the latest archival logics.
In the global context, it is important to highlight the section dedicated to Portuguese Literature, contemplating almost the complete works of Ramalho Ortigão, Alexandre Herculano, Guerra Junqueiro, Almeida Garrett, Henrique Lopes de Mendonça, counting some rarities, as is the case of the “Manta de Retalhos” by Faustino Xavier de Novais, 1865, a copy of the Chronicles of D. Fernando de Fernão Lopes, dated 1895, or the first printings of Teixeira de Pascoaes’ entire work, arising in the first two decades of the 20th century .
Another particularly important section focuses on Theater. Not only because of the importance that the activity always had in the Society, especially in the transition of the 19th century, but above all by the preservation of innumerable original pieces, created specifically for its presentation within the Association in the first quarter of the 20th century
In its entirety, and focusing only on the core of the Theater, SHE preserves 190 original editions of plays, making up the most extensive private corpus related to this cultural activity in the local context.
In terms of extreme dates, it begins in 1800 (the oldest printing it preserves is an original copy of the “Compendio de Historia Patria”, by José Travassos Lopes), and concludes in the last decade of the 20th century, with the Municipal Culture Bulletins of Évora´s Municipality, dated 1998.
The photography collection
Consisting of 339 species, this collection includes 154 black and white tests, 61 color tests and 124 albumin tests on cardboard. Some of the images were dated, being possible to mark the collection between the end of the 19th century (1898?) and the years 80/90 of the 20th century.
Of the existing images, the majority refers to events of SHE’s social life: dances, parties, exhibitions, etc. There are also a large number of pictures related to plays, scenarios and masked groups, as well as a large number of portraits (partners, directors, theater artists).
Not being a collection of a single author, there are evidence in this collection of photographers with recognized activity in Évora, Lisbon and Porto, among other locations, identified by the signatures and / or the stamps of their commercial house. We emphasize Ricardo Santos (late 19th century, early 20th century), Cipriano Camarate and Eduardo Nogueira (both with activity between the 1940s and 1960s) as the authors of most of the evidence, although we can also find images of Maria Eugenia Reya Campos, 1st Portuguese woman photographer, António Maria Serra and José Pedro Braga Passport, both Photographers of the Royal House, Silva Nogueira and David Freitas, among others.
