ABSTRACT
On 1 July 1836, Emile de Girardin, the proprietor of La Presse, published the first edition of that paper and thereby revolutionized the market, by selling it for half the customary price. On the other side of the Atlantic, some new countries, in their struggle to assert their nationhood, closely followed new trends in European countries, particularly France. In Brazil it was no different, and throughout the nineteenth century the bas de page of the newspapers contained serialized novels, mainly translated from the pages of newspapers that had come from France. In the French newspapers, the serial usually occupied two bas de page of more or less uniform height; in Brazil, when the Jornal do Commercio published serial novels in translation, it adopted a dynamic of its own with regard to the use of the bottom of the page.
