This is an attempt at investigating some of the ways books were circulated in Portugal in the late 18th and early 19th Century, analyzing the letters exchanged between Marino Miguel Franzini and European booksellers - particularly French, or in France - and commercial agents responsible for acquiring or dispatching the books to Portugal. The documents are concentrated in the decades immediately preceding the liberal movement, and are made up of lists of books (ordered or delivered), book catalogues, invoices and personal letters. These papers show information which strengthens the idea that, in Portugal, the philosophical enlightened literature was broadly spread, through processes which varied from direct purchase, mediated by booksellers, sailors and merchants, to contraband and counterfeiting, done by immigrants and liberal agitators of various nationalities.
book history; liberal ideas; commerce networks
