This content was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
Archaeology of a Book: An experimental approach to reading rare books in archival contextsMain MenuIntroductionReading the First Books is an exploration of America's earliest printed booksPath: ProductionThis path explores the narratives of production embedded in the material qualities of the Advertencias.Path: CollectionPath describes the collection of early printed books in religious libraries across Mexico. 16-18th centuries.Path: AcquisitionPath describes the dispersal of early printed books in libraries and private collections beyond Mexican borders.Path: (Digital) FuturesBook history in a digital futureReferencesReferences, citations, and further readingTermsIndex of termsAuthorship & AcknowledgementsHannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection
Confessionario Mayor en la lengua Mexicana y Castellana
12015-04-01T10:21:48-07:00Anonymous43581From Primeros Libros. Printed by Pedro Balli, 1578.plain2015-04-01T10:21:49-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
12015-02-20T19:27:23-08:00Path: Production24This path explores the narratives of production embedded in the material qualities of the Advertencias.media1527852015-05-06T18:12:12-07:00
In 1538, the Italian printer Juan Pablos arrived in Mexico with orders to establish a printing press. Pablos arrived with support from the Bishop Zumarraga and Viceroy Mendoza, in Mexico, and from the Cromberger publishing house, in Seville. The Manual de Adultos, which he printed in 1540, remains the oldest surviving text printed in the Americas.
The following decades saw the rapid growth of the printing industry in Mexico and Peru. In 1558, Pablos' assistant Antonio de Espinosa went to Spain to obtain permission to break Pablos's monopoly; in his wake, printing houses were established by Pablos' son in law, Pedro Ocharte; Pedro Balli; Antonio Ricardo; Enrique Martinez, and Melchor Ocharte. In ~1580, observing the saturation of the market in Mexico City, Antonio Ricardo acquired patronage from the Jesuits to travel to Peru, where he established the first printing press in Lima.
Printing operations in sixteenth-century Mexico were complex. Materials from metal type and wood-cuts to paper were originally acquired from Europe at great expense, though printers later developed the tools to produce materials in-house. Presses were ostensibly run by printers, but operations involved multiple workers, from female spouses to African slaves and European immigrants. Though recent scholarship has shown that the role of the inquisition in censoring early Mexican print production was relatively minimal, printers nonetheless had to deal with multiple regulatory offices and systems of hierarchy.
This video (in Spanish) tells the story of a modern-day printing press based on the early colonial model.
In this path we explore the production of the Advertencias through a close examination of its material record: title page and colophon, duplicate pages, excised phrases, and inconsistent catchwords. We hope that this exploration demonstrates the multiphonic quality of the printed book as a historical artifact. Though it may appear to be a single, coherent object in the shelf (or on the web), close examination reveals traces of the culturally complex scene of its production.
