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Counting on the collaboration of renowned authors in the very few fascicles released to the public, within or on the fringes of the academic circuit (with Teófilo Braga at the forefront, in addition to Oliveira Martins, Joaquim de Vasconcelos, Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos, and Júlio de Matos), in this area the Plutarco português was perhaps, one of the most evident and finished examples, even if not the most popular, of the attempt of the learned community to intervene in the public sphere. This "history with names," as referred to by Teófilo in the opening text on the "theory of great men," was indeed the chosen vehicle, from the most conservative to the avant-garde sectors, to promote contact with a wider audience. However, the Plutarco... opted for an overly erudite style to compete, within the Portuguese landscape, with the deliberately simple and accessible language used by the more popular – and allegedly democratising – press (T. Braga, “Theoria dos grandes homens”, 1881, p.vi)
In the periodical press and in small-format editions, as well as in monographs dedicated to great figures or in the "universal biographies" mentioned by Pinheiro Chagas, the initial outline of a national biographical corpus was taking shape, or, in a broader format than the original, that which Garrett called a "Plutarch of youth," whose principles and content he presented in the extensive essay on education dedicated to Queen Maria II. In education, moreover, this pedagogy of example, varying only in the relative prominence of the ancient hero or the more recent great man, was largely consensual, as was the case in literature specifically aimed at children and young people, resorting to the portrayal of great figures: from Pinheiro Chagas and Alfredo Gallis to Vilhena Barbosa, whose compendium of Exemplos de virtudes cívicas e domésticas: colhidos na história de Portugal [Examples of Civic and Domestic Virtues: Retrieved from the History of Portugal] was adopted in schools and successively re-edited over two decades. (J. Ribeiro Ferreira, “Débito de Almeida Garrett a Plutarco”, 2008; S. Campos Matos, Historiografia e memória nacional, 1998, pp.396-97).
The awareness that historical themes and the personalisation of the past strongly appealed to general curiosity was indeed shared by all those who were devoted to biographical writing, although the underlying motivations and objectives were not coincident.
