Agnes Gehbald reconstructs the processes of production, circulation, and consumption of printed texts from the mid-eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century in the viceroyalty of Peru. With careful and agile prose, the author analyzes in considerable detail the distribution and consumption of edicts, calendars, novenas, and other printed matter, mainly manufactured in the workshops established in Lima; as well as the heterogeneous composition of their consumer public. This is a study based on an extensive documentary and bibliographic corpus.
The author proposes two suggestive hypotheses. The first is that the book market was quantitatively extensive and qualitatively diverse because of the importation of books from Europe and the production of local printers. The second hypothesis maintains that the printing and sales places constituted an integrated market, where customers from different social origins could find new and used texts.
I want to highlight three contributions of this book. It presents the broad social universe that made it possible for the printed texts produced and marketed in Lima, the main book market of the viceroyalty, to reach the most remote corners of the extensive colonial geography. Therefore, it identifies the points of sale and distribution of printed texts in the capital city, and it also identifies the booksellers, merchants, individuals, and countless other agents who transported the printed texts along land and sea routes.
It proposes the textual genres that it considers most widespread in colonial society. Among them would have been the calendars titled Conocimiento de los tiempos, printed in a small format and with few pages, easy to carry in pocket, which contained the saints’ calendar, political anniversaries, astronomical forecasts, and historical and geographical information. The calendars’ users consulted them and made notes to complement or correct the information therein. The calendar collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale University is an excellent example of its intense social use because it contains numerous calendars with handwritten annotations.
This study documents the various forms of access to print by members of colonial society. The printed materials could be purchased in bookstores, grocery stores, and goods auctions; but they also reached people through testamentary legacies, donations, and loans. As in our days, there was a huge market for used texts in the colonial world, which allowed people with few economic resources to satisfy their literary interests.
Despite the contributions of recent studies on the history of printing, books, and readership, knowledge about processes as complex as the production, circulation, and consumption of printed matter in the Peruvian viceroyalty remains fragmentary. Consequently, proposing a joint vision is worthwhile but also risky. From reading Gehbald's book, several questions arise. What is the evidence that allows us to affirm that in the second half of the eighteenth century there was a greater diffusion of printed texts? Certainly, some book collections in cities like Lima and Cuzco are quite extensive; but it is only a qualitative perception. A more accurate perception would be achieved through a comparison with collections from previous periods. Furthermore, shipments of books from Cádiz to Callao do not seem to have been so abundant. Then again, many years ago, the French historian Marc Bloch warned of the dangers of generalizations. Santiago Urquizu's reading practices, for example, are his own, but not necessarily representative of a social group (266). Finally, in what way does the printed word increasingly pervade everyday lives? (284). It is important to remember that colonial society mostly lacked alphabetic literacy.
Gehbald's study is particularly valuable because it manages to reverse the traditional invisibility that the history of the book has had in studies of colonial literate culture. In addition, it proposes new and interesting research perspectives in the colonial readership, a fascinating field of study.
