Historical novels and books of revolutions at the bookstore "El Fénix" of Justo Sierra O'Reilly, Campeche (1848-1851)

Abstract

From the 1840s onwards, the printing presses of the peninsular society with their diversified services played a fundamental role in the expansion of the culture. The objective of this article is to analyze the offer of the bookstore of the prominent writer Justo Sierra, which opened in Campeche between 1848 and 1851, as an integrated service to the printing house “El Fénix”. The hemerographic and archival review made it possible to gather a new, reliable and representative base of books sold and to characterize the composition of the offer as secular and basically literary. Likewise, it was distinguished by its segment of historical novels and books on revolutions, whose contents or theses are synthetically examined with the purpose of evaluating their contribution to the intellectual culture of the region. Finally, the appendix ideally reconstructs the remittance sent by Sierra to a Tabasco merchant in 1849.