It presents the printed matter organized by the Maranhão student community which, imbued
with youthful spirit and literary tradition, worked for the intellectual development of their
homeland and were part of a very expressive student press at the end of the 19th century. The
objective is to analyze the movement of student publications that circulated in Maranhão in
the 19th century, identifying and rescuing the newspapers that composed this type of
periodical activity, presenting aspects related to their materiality, the subjects and institutions
that were part of their social production, as well as the themes most portrayed in these prints.
The theoretical and methodological approach is based on the assumptions of Cultural History
and Cultural History of the Media, with the contribution of bibliographical and documentary
research: the first based on studies on Press History, Press History of Maranhão and History
of Student Prints; the second, centered on auxiliary typographic fonts; in the figure of the
newspapers Diário do Maranhão (1855-1919), O Paiz (1863-1886) and Pacotilha (1880-1939)
for the identification of titles belonging to the initiative of the student body; and in main
sources, the student newspapers themselves, together with the National Library's Digital
Hemeroteca and the Rare Collection of the Benedito Leite Public Library to find and rescue
these materialities. The results of the investigation record the circulation of 22 newspapers
organized by students between the years 1870 and 1900. The student press from Maranhão
was materialized in small four-page newspapers that had irregular periodicity, however its
creation and maintenance involved several actors and institutions which aimed to use
newspapers as an object against the cultural and intellectual apathy that had taken hold in
Brazilian Athens.
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