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They were inaugurated by Virgínia de Castro e Almeida, also an official collaborator of the Portuguese government. Besides this literature targeting a more specific audience, the longevity of other series sponsored by state bodies should be noted, mostly dominated by the theme of overseas expansion and the recent exploration of the African continent. A reconfigured legacy of the end-of-century crisis that had hit the Portuguese colonial domain – when historiographical production on the Expansion period multiplied, especially biographical works– was indeed the foundation of a significant part of the biographical production in the mid-century and, by the same token, a substantial part of the state's investment in popularising historical content in the imagery of the Empire. A striking case in the expressly promotional literature of the "Pelo Império" ["By the Empire"] collection (published by the General Agency of the Colonies, from 1935 to the early 1960s), later continued to some degree (with some re-edited volumes) until 1974 in "Figuras e feitos de além-mar" ["Overseas Figures and Achievements"] then under the transmuted General Overseas Agency. The more qualified participation of academics is rarely found there or in its rival "Cadernos coloniais" [Colonial notebooks] by Cosmos. Instead, there is a clearly predominant proportion of authors directly or indirectly linked to the armed forces or overseas administration, but names like Eduardo de Noronha, Gastão de Sousa Dias, and Marcelo Caetano, for example, contributed to lending an aura of quality to these collections in their genre, and enjoyed widespread popularity (Arlindo M. Caldeira, op. cit., pp.130-31; L. Reis Torgal, “Livros de história e de histórias no Estado Novo”, 1992).
It may be said that the model and principle of Plutarch's Lives had been assimilated, materialised in the portraits of those who, in their various fields, had led the destiny of the nation. Faithful to the secular model of the exempla, whether under the direct sponsorship of the state or simply in its shadow, authors and publishers appeared to invest in these collections of individual trajectories which, to some extent and with a didactic purpose, presented a global interpretation of the country's history. Although the format and level of historical accuracy varied in these editions, the conception of history – and its underlying ideology– was essentially the same. Costa Brochado (this full member of the reconstituted APH and a member of the National Assembly) exemplified and synthesised the programme well in most of these works – including his own– by stating that what interested him was not "the life of a man, but that of the Portuguese nationality itself [...]".
