New Portuguese Letters is one of the great works of modern women's literature. This erotic, lyrical and profound novel of women's experience is the product of a creative alliance among three writers, all feminists, all named Maria, all mothers, all educated by nuns.
The Three Marias take as their inspiration the seventeenth-century European classic
Letters of a Portuguese Nun, five passionate missives supposedly written by Sister Mariana Alcoforado to the soldier-lover who had deserted her. These modern Marias weave tales, poems and meditations around the myths and reality of contemporary women's lives, a text that still engages readers today. When it first appeared, the book was banned, and the authors were arrested and charged with obscenity and abuse of freedom of the press. Today
New Portuguese Letters remains as fresh and challenging as when the cause of the Three Marias first lit a flame of international protest by women and for women.
Barreno, Maria Isabel: - The 3 Marias, all feminists, all named Maria, all mothers, all educated by nuns, wrote this book together about the lives of women in Portugal. When they submitted the text to the national censors as required by law in the closing days of the Portuguese dictatorship, they were arrested for "abusing the freedom of the press" and for pornography. Their book and their treatment became the first international protest issue of the feminist movement. With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, their trial was ended and the charges dropped. MARIA ISABEL BARRENO (1939-2016) was a Portuguese writer, essayist, journalist and sculptor. After the national and international acclaim accorded her as one of "The Three Marias", she continued her dedication to feminist literature. She was the winner of the Fernando Nemoura Prize (1991) for her work Crónica do Tempo and for Os Sensos Incomuns in 1993 she won the PEN Club Portugal Fiction Prize and the Grand Prize of Camilo Castelo Branco.
Horta, Maria Teresa: - The 3 Marias, all feminists, all named Maria, all mothers, all educated by nuns, wrote this book together about the lives of women in Portugal. When they submitted the text to the national censors as required by law in the closing days of the Portuguese dictatorship, they were arrested for "abusing the freedom of the press" and for pornography. Their book and their treatment became the first international protest issue of the feminist movement. With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, their trial was ended and the charges dropped.MARIA TERESA HORTA (1937-) is a Portuguese feminist poet, journalist and activist, and a member of the Poesia 61 group. Besides more than two dozen published collections of poetry and other writings, her work has appeared in such journals as Diário de Lisboa, A Capital, República, O Século, Diário de Notícias and Jornal de Letras e Artes. She was also editor in chief of Mulheres magazine.
Velho Da Costa, Maria Fátima: - The 3 Marias, all feminists, all named Maria, all mothers, all educated by nuns, wrote this book together about the lives of women in Portugal. When they submitted the text to the national censors as required by law in the closing days of the Portuguese dictatorship, they were arrested for "abusing the freedom of the press" and for pornography. Their book and their treatment became the first international protest issue of the feminist movement. With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, their trial was ended and the charges dropped. MARIA FÁTIMA VELHO DA COSTA (1938-2020) was another important Portuguese feminist writer. Ironically for one of "The Three Marias", her father, an army colonel, served on the Portuguese national censorship commission to which all manuscripts had to be submitted.Already an established writer by 1969 with the publication of her novel Maina Mendes, she of course became even better known with New Portuguese Letters, and she served as president of the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores (Portuguese Association of Writers). She was a Reader in the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at King's College London from 1980 to 1987. After her death in 2020 a new prize was instituted in her honor by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (Portuguese Society of Authors), the Prémio de Literatura Maria Velho Costa.
