Recent studies of the Enlightenment have begun to emphasize its global dimension, arguing that the leading ideas of the movement did not simply ‘spread’ from Europe, but were consciously adapted to local circumstances and problems. This article offers a case-study of nineteenth-century Brazil, focusing on two examples. The first is that of the priest Lopes Gama and his journal O Carapuceiro, inspired by the English Spectator but aimed at reforming the morals of Brazilian readers. The second example is that of the early feminist Nisia Floresta, who was long thought to have been the translator into Portuguese of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, although the text that she translated under that name was actually a more radical English pamphlet by ‘Sophia, a Person of Quality’.