A Colonial Book Market
Peruvian Print Culture in the Age of Enlightenment

A social history of books in Spanish America which traces the reach of reading material in late colonial Peru.

Agnes Gehbald (Author)

9781009360852, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 November 2023

402 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.7 cm, 0.709 kg

'… this brilliant study enlists Lima's enlightened print culture in debates whose terms have mostly been fashioned elsewhere, and in which Lima has rarely qualified as “enlightened” or bookish.' Mark Thurner, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

This volume provides a wholly original social history of books in late colonial Peru. From the second half of the eighteenth century onward, workshops in Lima and transoceanic imports supplied the market with unprecedented quantities of print publications. By tracing the variety of printed commodities that were circulating in the urban sphere, as well as analysing the spatiality of the trade and the materiality of the books themselves, Agnes Gehbald assesses the meaning of print culture in the everyday lives of the viceroyalty. She reveals how books permeated late colonial society on a broad scale and how they figured as objects in the inventories of diverse individuals, both women and men, who, in previous centuries, had been far less likely to possess them. Deeply researched and profound, A Colonial Book Market uncovers how people in Peruvian cities gained access to reading material and participated in the global Enlightenment project.

Introduction: a social history of books
1. Colonial confines
2. Growing supplies
3. An expanding market
4. Bestselling genres
5. The reach of reading material
Conclusion: a community of readers across the Atlantic
Appendix A: bibliographic categories
Appendix B: printing workshops in Lima, c. 1760–1820
Appendix C: book trade personnel in Lima, 1770–1822
Appendix D: map of the sites of printing and bookselling in Lima, 1760–1822
Appendix E: boxes with books imported to Callao, 1776–1818
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]