This paper is mainly concerned about discussing the image of Brazilian men of letters as a social group distant from the customs and traditions of the low-income workers about which they wrote in the press of the late XIX and early XX centuries. To do so, this study analyzes the attempt to build such an image through a literary quest published in the year of 1905 by the newspaper Diário de Pernambuco. Its consequences show that the autonomy of the journalistic class was made difficult by the internal differences and conflicts in which participated the subjects identified as poor - a class of people not strange to the literate world.
low-income people; work; newspapers; identity; crime; culture