Portuguese is a transcontinental literary language with distinct histories in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Timor-Leste, and communities far beyond those states. This shelf begins with two sixteenth-century Portuguese monuments—Camões's maritime epic and Gil Vicente's multilingual theatre—and Machado de Assis's 1881 Brazilian novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas in its original Portuguese. It does not treat Portugal, empire, Brazil, or three famous men as the whole field.

Begin with the Introduction to Portuguese-Language Literature, choose a route through the Reader's Guide, and keep the Portuguese-Language Literature Glossary nearby. The guide names the shelf's present absences as carefully as its holdings.