ABSTRACT
Civil engineers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are usually seen as rational men, whose precise actions and command of technology enabled them to intervene in the public works, urban modernisation, and major territorial infrastructures – such as roads, canals, and railways – that structured the territories of each country. Nevertheless, those men possessed other traits which, to this day, have received little attention. To grasp the multiple facets of these engineers, we need only remember that many of them were involved in publishing initiatives, besides authoring articles and books, mostly technical. It is true that these often had a didactic purpose, or were aimed at dissemination, but there were also (more so than we have known so far) works of a literary nature such as novels, short stories, and theatre plays.
