A warning sent from Paris in 1792 made the Chief of Police in Lisbon pay close attention to the actions of one of the main booksellers of the city. As most of the booksellers of the time, this one was born French and had troubles with the Portuguese Censorship authorities due to his sell- ing of forbidden books. The Chief of Police actions at that time, besides the daily life problems, dealt closely with the suppression of revolutionary ideas that might reach Portugal and its domains. The booksellers, over whom the suspicion of revolutionary, liberal and free mason was constant, had estab- lished themselves in Portugal some decades earlier, coming mainly from France and Italy, suffered heavy sanctions, from the seizure of property to imprisonment and exile. In the crossroads of the lives of the people studied here, we can try to understand more about the cultural practices around the printed word at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th Century.
history of the printed word; forbidden books; book commerce and circulation