4 - Bestselling Genres

Summary

Chapter 4 focuses on a selection of bestselling genres on the colonial book market in Peru by analysing them in terms of production modes, materiality, and potential users. It exposes how a focus on the colonial market must necessarily include the entire array of print publications and, in particular, the small printing jobs relating to local affairs that penetrated various spheres of urban life. While the many small-format reprints of prayer booklets prove that religion was a popular subject for books, an unpublished calendar enterprise serves as a case study to assess knowledge of religious and scientific nature in print. In line with hypotheses of a Catholic Enlightenment, the chapter turns from religion to practical knowledge with an analysis of manuals and how-to books, revealing a shared canon of reading material within the empire. Depending on local relatedness, titles of each of the genres originated either from local workshops or as imports.