The novel Helena was first published in serial form in thirty-five installments from August to September 1876 in the periodical O Globo in Rio de Janeiro. The novel was then published in book form in October 1876. The novel is set in the decade of the 1850s and presents a portrait of Brazil’s political and social history during the middle of the nineteenth century, focusing particularly on the production of unequal social relations. Against this backdrop, the novel’s plot centers on the forbidden love between two tragic figures, Helena and Estácio, separated by a variety of social, class, and family differences.