Na morte do Serenissimo Senhor D. José Principe do Brazil, elegia.

Lisbon, Na Officina dos Herdeiros de Domingos Gonçalves, 1788.. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 4°, laters green wrappers (faded). Woodcut ornament on title page. Pencil underlining on title page. Overall in good to very good condition. Old octagonal paper tag with blue border and manuscript shelfmark "57" on upper outer corner of front wrapper. 14 pp. *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION of this elegiac poem. As the eldest son of D. Maria I and D. Pedro III, D. José (b. 1761) was the heir to the throne of Portugal, and his death at a young age radically changed the course of the country over the following decades. In 1777, at age 15, D. José married his aunt, the thirty-year-old Infanta Benedita, youngest daughter of D. José I and D. Mariana Victoria of Spain. The marriage was favored by D. José I, but it was rumored that it was particularly desired by the powerful Marquês de Pombal, who perhaps hoped to establish Salic law so that the succession to the throne would have passed from D. José I directly to his grandson D. José, bypassing D. Maria - who was known to dislike Pombal. Three days after his grandson’s wedding D. José I died. D. Maria succeeded to the throne as Portugal's first queen regnant, and D. José became Prince of Brazil and Duke of Bragança. One of D. Maria's first acts was to remove Pombal from office and choose advisors from among his enemies. Still, many Portuguese hoped that when D. José succeeded to the throne, he would be influenced by the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment.Alas, in 1788 the 27-year-old D. José died of smallpox, without issue. (His mother had refused to allow him to receive the recently discovered inoculation.) The new heir to the throne was D. José's brother D. João, who was known to be very religious and to favor absolutism. He acted as prince regent from 1799 and ruled as D. João VI from 1816 to 1826.A number of works on the death of D. José were published together under the series title Collecçaõ funebre das obras impressas por ocasião da morte do serenissimo senhor D. Joseph Principe do Brasil, Lisbon, 1788. *** Not located in Innocêncio or Fonseca, Pseudónimos. Porbase locates five copies, all in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Not located in Jisc.