The market's meat: textbooks and the flourishing of book trade in the city of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The goal of this work is to analyze the relationship between the
flourishing publishing market and the significant investment made
in the publication of textbooks, particularly in Brazilian History.
Through various sources, such as textbooks, publisher catalogs
and almanacs, ads in periodicals, among others, this study seeks to
understand changes and continuities in the production of history
textbooks in the core of the expansion of literate culture in Rio de
Janeiro, from the mid-nineteenth century to the early decades of
the twentieth century. It aims to show the actions of some of those
involved in this process – authors, booksellers, publishers,
teachers – in order to understand the meanings of the
popularization of historical knowledge through school textbooks.