Eça de Queirôs's work – mainly his novels – has traditionally been (and to a large extent still is) studied within the context of French literature and culture, although he lived in England for fourteen years (from 1874 to 1888). Many critics have traced the influence of Madame Bovary or L'Éducation Sentimentale in Os Maias, for instance, and as soon as he published O Crime do Padre Amaro he was accused of plagiarizing La Faute de l'AbbéMouret.

Although Eça knew Heine and Poe, among others, from French translations, his early masters were undoubtedly French – Proudhon, Taine, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Hugo – as he himself recognized in texts such as ‘O “Francezismo”’, a title which could be translated in English as ‘Frenchification’. Here, he ironically (and somewhat vitriolically) describes his educational background, from the very day he was born, took his first steps wearing ‘crocheted baby booties’ (p. 398) and started ‘breathing France’ (p. 398) to the time when, as a child, he was told French stories of French historical heroes; from his French books at school to his university lectures and textbooks – all in French. He also caricatures Lisbon's contemporary cultural and social scene: only French plays are performed, only French books are sold, in the hotels only French food can be eaten and, what despairs him most, Portuguese literature is no more than a copy of French literature. For Eça, Portugal is merely ‘a country translated from the French into slang’ (p. 395).