Keywords

Introduction

The eighteenth century was a period of great change in the book trade and in the creation of new readerships on both sides of the Atlantic. On the one hand, there was an increase in the number of printing presses built and books published in territories such as France, Spain, North America and, to a lesser extent, Spanish America. On the other, a moderate growth in literacy levels and the development of a widening public sphere of opinion meant that different sectors of the publishing world could envisage new audiences for their works. These factors enabled the literary world’s trading routes to expand, as well as motivating writers, translators and other agents to develop innovative strategies in the search for new readers. As part of this process, and for various reasons, the publication of literature targeted at female readers also experienced growth during the century.

Firstly, literary genres appealing explicitly to women might have done so for didactic purposes—in other words, to improve their moral or religious education. Secondly, there were commercial reasons for attempting to engage with female readers. As part of the process of creating new readerships, women were now perceived as potential recipients of the books being published, allowing various niches of the market to be opened up to new buyers (women themselves, and their parents or educators). And, thirdly, women could be used by the different agents involved in publishing as a way of drawing in other readers as well: some of the literature published during the Enlightenment and categorised as being for women used that classification in metonymic fashion to refer to any non-specialist readership, whether this was children, women or simply anyone without expertise in the subject matter in question. This applies to scientific treatises such as the well-known Italian work Il Newtonianismo per le dame (Francesco Algarotti, Naples, 1737), translated into several languages; and to popularised manuals of religious doctrine such as the New Spanish Ejercicios espirituales de san Ignacio acomodados al estado y profesión religiosa de las señoras vírgenes (Spiritual exercises of St Ignatius adapted to the state and religious profession of maiden ladies) (Antonio Núñez de Miranda, Mexico City, 1695), to cite just two examples.

In other words, literature “for women” was never a self-evident category encompassing what women actually read, liked, bought or owned. Rather it was a moral and/or commercial product devised or identified by writers, translators, booksellers, moralists and educators.

This paper will aim to analyse the ways in which literature for women developed both in Spain and, primarily, New Spain, as well as looking at how it travelled from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Generally speaking, research into this type of literature has focused on other geographical territories, such as England or France (Pearson 1999). One of the most common approaches, moreover, has been to study the inventories of women’s libraries, or family libraries inherited by women, in order to gather clues about female reading habits and consider the extent to which women actually consumed the literature intended for them. With very few exceptions (Arias de Saavedra Alías 2017), the spotlight has not been trained on literature published in Spanish, whether original or in translation, or on the relationship between Europe and Spanish America. One analysis has been carried out into the models of femininity projected by authors and moralists who travelled between the two continents, an area addressed by studying the conduct books and moralising works that started to arrive in America from the early days of colonisation onwards (Candau 2007). There is also a study based on the literature for women found in Mexican libraries housing eighteenth-century collections (Ruiz Barrionuevo 2007). This chapter will offer something different. I want to evaluate the similarities and differences between New Spain and peninsular Spain as regards the production and circulation of such literature for women (including texts originally written in Spanish and translations from other languages). I also want to examine the extent to which that literature travelled, potentially in both directions (although it is easier to trace works shipped from Europe to America than vice versa). How were the contents and formats of these books adapted via translations or reprints? Was there a marked difference in the religious-secular balance between Spain and New Spain?

With this in mind, I have sought out works aimed specifically at women, counting as such those addressing “women”, “maidens”, “mothers”, “daughters”, “nuns” or “midwives” in their titles. To do so, I have used the bibliographic catalogues of José Toribio Medina and Francisco Aguilar Piñal. The former, La imprenta en México (1539–1821) (Printing press in Mexico (1539–1821)), published in several volumes between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lists works printed in New Spain during the viceroyalty and up to Mexican independence in 1821. Despite its usefulness, it has its limitations (Hampe Martínez 2010, 58; Moreno Gamboa 2018, 29; Vogeley 2011, 16). The author failed to include, for example, a whole series of pamphlets and other minor works that were widely read throughout the 1700s. There are similar issues with the second catalogue, the Bibliografía de autores españoles del siglo XVIII (Bibliography of eighteenth-century Spanish authors), compiled by Francisco Aguilar Piñal towards the end of the twentieth century. It only lists literature published in Spain during the eighteenth century in Spanish, overlooking not only the other languages of the peninsula but many of the short devotional works and texts designed purely to entertain that were so popular at the time. Both collections have therefore been treated with caution. To explore how literature circulated between Spain and America, I have also studied the advertisements for books placed in the Gazeta de México.Footnote 1 This was the first periodical publication in New Spain and went through three phases of existence. Its initial issues appeared in 1722, then it re-emerged between 1728 and 1742, and again between 1784 and 1809—the main focus here will be on this final phase. Like other comparable periodicals, such as the Gazeta de Madrid or the Gazeta de Lisboa, the Gazeta de México featured numerous book advertisements, generally on its back page. It concentrated primarily on publishing the details of official news, regulations and provisions issued by the metropolitan and viceroyal authorities, and although it devoted little space to the debates of the day, did enable various pieces of scientific and literary news to circulate (Torres Puga 2010, 267). Although I am not focusing on the articles or discussions that appeared in its pages, we should not forget the key role played by such texts when it comes to analysing the creation of readerships over the course of the eighteenth century, as has been done by Mariselle Meléndez, with regard to women in Peru (2018), and Gabriel Torres Puga, with regard to the development of a public sphere of opinion in Mexico (2010).

The Circulation of Books and Ideas Between Spain and Mexico

In order to understand how literature for women was produced and circulated between the two sides of the Atlantic, it is first necessary to understand how the book trade, the world of printing and the different agents involved in this process functioned. As soon as Castile’s conquest and colonisation of the New World had begun, the Spanish Monarchy had established a monopoly over trade with its territories in America. For this reason, all goods sent from Spanish America to Europe, and vice versa, had to pass through Seville in the 1500s and 1600s, then, from 1717 onwards, through Cádiz. Because of this commercial exclusivity, which lasted throughout the early modern period, the American territories remained largely dependent on the metropolis (Gómez Álvarez 2019, 14). Books were among the key goods subject to such regulation and had to pass through various controls before being shipped transatlantically (Maillard Álvarez 2014, Rueda Ramírez 2021). Customs officers of the Crown examined merchandise at the customs house before an individual embarked for America but, as far as books were concerned, inquisitorial vigilance and checks became increasingly tight (Márquez Macías 2010, 156).

Anyone wanting to transport books to America had to submit an inventory beforehand to ensure that they all complied with the necessary licences. These inventories, which have survived for the sixteenth, seventeenth and, above all, eighteenth centuries and are housed in the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico, are a crucial source of information for tracing literary circulation between Europe and America (Gómez Álvarez 2011). The system did not however entirely prevent banned books from reaching America, as people found various ways of circumventing it.

Most studies about the circulation of books between the two continents have focused on documenting the export of books from Europe to America, paying less attention to the arrival in Europe of printed matter from America. They have also concentrated on book production in centres such as Mexico City and Lima, where printing presses were established very early, in 1539 and 1589 respectively, rather than on other, later American print shops. Two more centres were created in the following century: Puebla de los Ángeles in 1640 and Guatemala in 1660. Printing then experienced genuine growth between the early 1700s and 1825, a period which saw the creation of as many as sixty new presses, some as important as those of Santa Fe de Bogotá in 1738 or Buenos Aires in 1780. There were still not enough, however, for them to compete with European levels of production (Moreno Gamboa 2017, 2018; Guibovich 2022). We need to only compare the figures of France, Spain and New Spain to understand the situation: in the early 1700s France had 250 printing presses, by the end of the century Spain had more than 200, while New Spain in the same period had no more than half a dozen (Moreno Gamboa 2018, 107).

There are other reasons, too, for the lower levels of production, including bureaucratic obstacles and the high price of paper, which had to be imported. Throughout the eighteenth century, there was some growth in the number of titles printed in territories such as New Spain, but it was moderate in scale (Moreno Gamboa 2018, 84). Given such limitations, therefore, although print shops did produce books, there was a preference for other smaller and more adaptable formats, cheaper to print and easier to distribute. New Spain saw the emergence of cajones, cajoncillos, alacenas and other stalls specialising in the sale of chapbooks, whose contents might include prayers, sermons, the lives of saints, devotionals, calendars, astrological prognostications or other widely consumed material (Moreno Gamboa 2017, 494). During the eighteenth century, there was a huge growth in the number of works in this format produced by the printing presses of New Spain, as well as by those of France and Spain (Gomis Coloma 2015). If we want to analyse home-grown American production and the circulation of printed matter, we must therefore take these kinds of texts into account as they were widely accessed, both for personal consumption and to be read aloud to those who were illiterate.

In contrast to the abundance of these short texts, other works were printed on a rather more limited scale in New Spain; the same was true when it came to reprinting European publications. The vast majority of those that did appear, moreover, were religious in nature, as was also true of the aforementioned pamphlets. This is hardly surprising, given that the clergy dominated New Spain’s intellectual circles until well into the eighteenth century. The importance of the Church in the dissemination of written culture in the viceroyalty is reflected both in its various literacy strategies (Castañeda 2004) and in the publishing market as a whole, as it played a central role in writing, funding and reading printed works (Moreno Gamboa 2018, 122). This issue, among others, has led to reflections on the very nature of the Enlightenment in New Spain. Shaped as it was by the secular and regular clergy, it has traditionally been interpreted as limited by the influence of the Church, and both weaker than and subsidiary to its European counterpart. This has led to the flow of Enlightenment ideas being investigated as an exclusively one-directional movement—from Europe to America—and to the first signs of modernity being discerned in secularisation. As Iván Escamilla argues, however, we have to reevaluate the indigenous processes of change:

We search for enlightened and very specific interpretations, when perhaps what we should see is an enlightened attitude towards reading and interpretations; we try to unearth enlightened discourses from the testimonies of the age, when perhaps we should first investigate the modification of traditional discourses and practices; we imagine an indigenous modernity, when we should also understand this as a response and a challenge to external stimuli; we want to think of enlightened understanding as limited to traditional centres of culture and learning, such as Mexico City and Puebla, when perhaps there were multiple local births of modernity; influenced by a liberal historical teleology, we want to find a secular and secularising Enlightenment, when perhaps we should be considering an ecclesiastical Enlightenment. (Escamilla González 2010, 112)

We have to consider these observations when examining the printed material produced in New Spain, taking into account the ways in which it was influenced by clerics and members of religious orders (male and female). It is with all this in mind that the literature for women printed in New Spain has to be analysed.

The second half of the eighteenth century saw an increase in the amount of European literature travelling to Spanish America. New works, new writers and new ideas, primarily French in origin, permeated the intellectual environment of the enlightened elites in Mexico as in Europe. The distribution of French works, whether in the original language or in translation, expanded hugely in the final decades of the century. Some of these texts were prohibited by the Inquisition in the territories of the Spanish Monarchy, as was true of Françoise de Graffigny’s epistolary novel Lettres d’une Péruvienne, published in French in 1747 and added to the list of banned books in 1794. What did receive authorisation was the Spanish version, Cartas de una peruana, translated and adapted to Spanish censorship by María Rosario Romero in 1792 (Calvo Maturana 2019, Bolufer Peruga 2014). The original French novel enjoyed limited circulation in the lands of the Spanish Monarchy, although there are first editions in libraries such as that of the Count of Carlet, who must have been given special dispensation to own a copy.Footnote 2 By contrast, the Spanish translation had more freedom of movement and was in fact advertised in the Gazeta de México in September 1794.

Attractive as it was of course, French literature “was not acting on a tabula rasa nor did it have any kind of supernatural power … To assume that the possession of a forbidden book would be enough to transform an individual’s cultural world would be to exaggerate its influence” (Torres Puga 2010, 230). Either way, we can see changes starting to occur towards the end of the eighteenth century. Firstly, in the political and scientific debates developing in the Mexican press of the time. Secondly, in the private libraries of the Creole elite between 1750 and 1819, as studied by Cristina Gómez Álvarez (2019). And thirdly, in the characteristics of the most published New Spanish works and writers, as investigated by Olivia Moreno Gamboa (2018). Taken together, these factors seem to point to a gradual secularisation affecting reading practices and the publishing market, which leads us to consider how such changes influenced literature for women as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth.

On Women, Literature and Reading in Spanish America

In order to understand the strategies involved in creating a female readership, we first need to delve deeper into women’s relationship with the written word, on both sides of the Atlantic. It is common knowledge that throughout Europe and America the reading public grew and diversified over the course of the eighteenth century, something which went hand in hand with changes in the publishing market, the development of the public sphere of opinion and the promotion of new discourses on teaching and learning aimed at extending education and improving teaching methods. The result was a gradual increase in literacy, if with limits imposed by class, race, gender and the varying provisions of rural and urban environments. By the end of the eighteenth century, the literacy rate in Spain for women was below 11%, while for men it was around 34%. This discrepancy can also be seen in the numbers attending school by then: just under 12% of girls compared to 39% of boys (Rey Castelao 2012, 616 and 617). In spite of these low figures, there was a newly increased perception of the existence of a female audience at whom to target the books being published and the articles appearing in different kinds of newspapers, whether for educational, commercial or strategic reasons (Bolufer Peruga 1995). In Spain, numerous original works and translations (many of French literature) were printed with a female readership explicitly or implicitly in mind. Most of these were texts of a religious, educational and moralising nature, these being the genres that were most obviously targeted at women; but there were also treatises on domestic economy and matters of health, and popularised scientific texts. One such publication was Lidia de Gersin o Historia de una señorita inglesa de ocho años, para la instrucción y diversión de las niñas de la misma edad (Lydia de Gersin, or The Tale of an Eight-Year-Old English Girl, for the instruction and diversion of girls of the same age) (Barcelona, 1804), translated from the French by a woman: Juana Bergnes y las Casas.Footnote 3 Another was Pierre Collot’s Conversaciones sobre diferentes asuntos de moral, muy a propósito para imbuir y educar en la piedad a las señoritas jóvenes,Footnote 4 translated by Francisco Fernando de Flores (Conversations on various moral questions, most suitable for educating and instilling piety in young ladies) (Madrid, 1787). Novels, too, were thought of as being primarily read by women (García Garrosa 2016, Lasa-Álvarez 2022), although we know they were consumed by a wide range of readers. All these works for women were part of wider book circuits, which transcended geographical boundaries, as evidenced by the circulation of French, English and Italian literature to Spain, both in the original language and in translation. Literature for women in other European countries enjoyed greater thematic variety, something that can be linked to higher levels of literacy and an intellectual environment—the academies and salons of France, Italy and Britain, for example—in which women played a more prominent role (D’Ezio 2011; Russell 2007).

With regard to Spanish America, and New Spain in particular, literacy and education were a priority from the early days of colonisation onwards, viewed as essential tools in converting the indigenous population to Christianity. For this reason, there was a notably close relationship between reading and the teaching of Christian doctrine in the Spanish American territories. The basics of reading and writing were taught through primers, catechisms and other short texts, published both in Spanish and in indigenous languages (Gonzalbo Aizpuru 2010). Overall illiteracy levels remained high, especially among women, with more formal education limited to the Creole elites (Ruiz Barrionuevo 2007, 540–542). This has made it more difficult to uncover potential evidence of reading among New Spanish women, as investigated by Josefina Muriel (1994) and others, more recently, by looking at libraries, moralising texts and lists of prohibited books (Treviño Salazar and Farré Vidal 2005; Guzmán Pérez and Barbosa Malagón 2013). The most significant progress in this area has been made in the sphere of the Church and education, given that many of the minority of literate women in eighteenth-century Mexico were nuns (Carreño Velázquez 2010; García Aguilar 2017; Loreto López 2000). Ecclesiastical institutions were, moreover, especially concerned with the education of girls. From the mid-1700s onwards, this interest intensified with the arrival in America of new religious orders such as the Company of Mary, founded in France in 1606 and established in New Spain in 1753 by María Ignacia de Azlor y Echeverz (Foz y Foz 1981). It was this same institution that opened the highest number of schools for girls in peninsular Spain in the late eighteenth century: by 1797 it had 11 centres with 290 female teachers and novices looking after 113 boarders and 238 day girls (Rey Castelao 2012, 620). The main innovation here was the fact that these schools were expected to educate pupils from any economic background and so needed to be free of charge. It was also envisaged that their teachers (all of them nuns) would be well-trained and competent, and would pass on useful skills to all young women (Foz y Foz 1981, 207 and 208).

This context of changes in education and teaching also led to the founding of the Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola in Mexico City in 1767, better known as the Colegio de Vizcaínas (Carreño Velázquez 2010). It was established to offer education to girls, orphaned Creole girls in particular, and complemented the work begun by the Company of Mary very effectively by offering a more secular type of education. Thanks to the Colegio, a greater number of girls learned to read and write; its students also had access to an extensive library, consisting mainly of religious and moral texts, as well as music books—a collection that grew over the years (Ruiz Barrionuevo 2007, 541 and 542).

It is worth highlighting the role of these educational institutions, and their links with the Church, because it helps us understand some of the particularities of women’s literature in the viceroyalty. Works of a spiritual nature, whether manuals for nuns, doctrinal primers or devotional texts, had a significant educational and formative component. Many were therefore written as adaptations, simplifications or detailed explanations of doctrinal matters that were more difficult to understand for a non-educated readership, such as women or, more specifically, nuns, compared to male clerics (Carreño Velázquez 2010, 170). But the fact that these types of books were written, or translated, with a non-specialist audience in mind also made them especially useful for children, with some being used as textbooks to educate the very young. One important example is the Carta edificante en que el Padre Antonio de Paredes de la Compañía de Jesús da noticia de la exemplar vida, sólidas virtudes y santa muerte de la Hermana Salvadora de los Santos, India Otomí (Edifying letter in which Father Antonio de Paredes of the Company of Jesus recounts the exemplary life, steadfast virtues and blessed death of Sister Salvadora de los Santos, an Otomí Indian), published in Mexico in 1763. This hagiography explained how Sister Salvadora de los Santos had helped a group of women establish a Carmelite community of lay sisters, and how her exemplary life was a model for both young and old. In 1784, it became the first free textbook published in Mexico, with a print run of 1000 copies. The prologue to the 1784 reprint specifically noted that it was its “commendable object to provide the Schools in which our children are educated with a sort of primer which, at the same time as enabling them to learn to read, will teach them to imitate Christian virtues through the pleasing, powerful and natural attraction of seeing them practised by a person of their own kind” (Tanck de Estrada 2004, 218–219). The Carta, therefore, promoted reading and the education of both boys and girls in schools. Moreover, it strategically highlighted its protagonist’s indigenous background, depicting her as someone with whom Indian men and women, as well as women leading a religious life, could identify.

Although education was one of the fields that best represented signs of change in the creation of new readerships in the late eighteenth century, there was still far less thematic diversity in New Spain’s home-grown print production than in that of Spain—thanks to the limitations of the American print shops, as described above, the abundance of imported texts and the cultural domination of the clergy. That said, it should be noted that some female members of the viceroyalty’s Creole elite (both lay and religious individuals) were actively involved in financing publications and, above all, in running printing businesses (García Aguilar 2008; Garone Gravier 2010). This was not something exclusive to New Spain, as it was common in both Spanish America and mainland Spain for women to keep these family businesses going for years (Establés Susán 2018). The prominent position of women in the publishing world, therefore, was not so very different from the situation in European territories.

In New Spain, readerships gradually began to become more diversified and printed texts more secularised in the early nineteenth century, somewhat later than in Europe. Significantly, new, non-religious works published in Mexico introduced debates that were already widespread in Europe, such as the discussion of female education as an indicator of modernisation. In the viceroyalty, this acquired new dimensions in that it was intertwined with other factors such as race, as in the case of La Quijotita y su prima (Little Miss Quixote and her Cousin) (1818–1819), a well-known work by New Spanish writer and journalist José Fernández de Lizardi (Jaffe 2019, 78). Similarly, in the context of the revolutionary process that resulted in Mexican independence, women gained prominence as subjects actively involved in the process of consolidating the new nation, or at least appeared as potential readers, and purported authors, of pamphlets and newspaper articles (Mendoza Castillo and Sánchez Morales 2004). The press, therefore, is particularly helpful in enabling us to appreciate the changes of the day (Torres Puga 2010). In Spain, although to a lesser extent and a little later than in the rest of Europe, the periodical press had already established its role in shaping behaviour, and specialist newspapers directed at female readers were beginning to emerge by the beginning of the nineteenth century (Urzainqui Miqueleiz 2016). In New Spain, by contrast, publications of this kind did not begin to proliferate until well into that century (Carreño Velázquez 2010, 142).

The holdings of Mexican libraries also reflect the changes that occurred during the nineteenth century. The library of the Santa Catalina convent in Puebla, for example, shows that, compared to the clear predominance of religious literature among the publications of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, those produced in the nineteenth are much more varied in their subject matter, with books on literature, astronomy, philosophy and chemistry, among others (Carreño Velázquez 2010, 76 and 77). In fact, it was during this century that the number of works published directly in Spanish in Paris or Philadelphia increased (Muriel 1994, 172). That same convent library possesses copies of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Dictionary of the Castilian language) of 1838, published in Paris; Nuevo lunario perpetuo, considerablemente refundido y aumentado con unas observaciones sobre diferentes ramos de astronomía e historia natural (New perpetual lunar calendar, substantially revised and expanded with observations on different branches of astronomy and natural history), it too issued in Paris, in 1842; and Quaresma devota o Exercicios espirituales para el santo tiempo de quaresma; en que pueden ocuparse las almas, sean religiosas o seculares, hombres o mugeres (A Lenten Devotional, or Spiritual exercises for the holy season of Lent; to occupy the souls of men or women, religious or secular), published in Philadelphia in 1833. The North American city became an important centre for the production and distribution of Spanish-language literature between the North and the South of America, playing a particularly active role in the circulation of new political ideas reported in Spanish and intended for a wide Spanish-speaking readership stretching beyond the lands of the Spanish Monarchy (Lazo 2007; Vogeley 2011).

Intercontinental Circulation of Books for Women: Some Examples

Moving on from these general discussions of the transatlantic book trade and women’s relationship with the publishing world, this section will examine the circulation of women’s literature in greater depth by looking at some specific examples. Among the educational, moralising and religious works published in Spain, many of those that went on to circulate between the continents were translations of French texts, such as Fénelon’s Tratado de la educación de las hijas (Traité de l’éducation des filles 1687), translated by Remigio Asensio (Madrid, 1769), or Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Almacén de señoritas adolescentes o Diálogos de una sabia directora con sus nobles discípulas (The Young Misses Magazine: containing Dialogues between a Governess and several Young Ladies of Quality, her Scholars), translated from the French Magasin des adolescents by Plácido Barco López (Madrid, 1787) (Bolufer Peruga 2002). These educational works, which went through numerous editions and were translated into several other languages until well into the nineteenth century, travelled to America (Gómez Álvarez 2011) and found homes in Mexican libraries (Ruiz Barrionuevo 2007, 543). The Almacén de señoritas adolescentes, for example, was the only non-religious eighteenth-century work present in the Dominican convent of Santa Catalina in Puebla.

Las Veladas de la Quinta, o novelas e historias sumamente útiles para que las madres de familia puedan instruir a sus hijos juntando la doctrina con el recreo (The Tales of the Castle: or, stories that will serve mothers well in instructing their children by combining doctrine with delight—published in English as The Tales of the Castle: Stories of Instruction and Delight) by Stéphanie Félicité Du Crest, Comtesse de Genlis (translated from its French version Les Veillées du château by Fernando de Guilleman, Madrid, 1758), a work widely distributed across Europe in French, English and Spanish editions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was also a great success in New Spain. It was advertised in the Gazeta on up to five occasions between 1790 and 1802. A similar preoccupation with the parent’s role as educator is also found in the title of Spanish works such as Manuel Bellosartes’ Academia doméstica o asuntos ascéticos dirigidos a los padres y madres de familia (A Domestic Academy, or ascetic matters aimed at fathers and mothers) (Barcelona, 1786), advertised in Mexico City in February 1794. Finally, French and English novels too reached New Spain as Spanish-language editions published in Spain. These included Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (translated from the French version by Ignacio García Malo, Madrid, 1799) and Clarissa (translated by José Marcos Gutiérrez, Madrid, 1794), both advertised in 1804; and Sophia Lee’s El subterráneo o La Matilde (The Recess; translated by Manuel de Quevedo Bustamante, Madrid, 1795) and Sarah Fielding’s La huerfanita inglesa o historia de Carlota Summers (The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl 1750) (Madrid, 1797), both advertised in March 1802. Some of these novels were also reprinted as new editions in Mexico City, but at a later date, perhaps reflecting a growth in local demand—for instance, Michel-Ange Marin’s Virginia, la doncella christiana. Historia siciliana que se propone por modelo a las señoritas que aspiran a la perfección (Virginia, the Christian Virgin. A Sicilian tale to serve as a model for young ladies aspiring to perfection), translated from the French Virginie ou la Vierge Chrétienne by Cayetana Aguirre y Rosales, was published in Madrid in 1806, and in Mexico City in 1853.

All these books travelled across the Atlantic, and turned the American market into an active player in the circulation of European literature. As we have seen, though, American printers were also producing their own reprints and translations of works from overseas. One non-fiction example is Antonio Medina’s Cartilla útil y necesaria para instruirse las matronas (A letter useful and necessary for the education of midwives), published in Madrid in 1785 but reprinted in Mexico City in 1806 at the print shop owned by María Fernández de Jáuregui. In fact, it was this New Spanish version that was advertised in the Gazeta in 1807. This is not the only text we find addressed to midwives in New Spain. In 1774, Embriología sagrada, o Tratado de la obligación que tienen los curas, confesores, médicos, comadres y otras personas, de cooperar a la salvación de los niños que aún no han nacido (Sacred Embryology, or Treatise on the obligation of priests, confessors, physicians, midwives and other persons to cooperate in the salvation of unborn children) (Bolufer Peruga 1998; Moriconi 2019) appeared in Spain as part of a campaign organised by the Church and the Bourbon government to ensure that even unborn babies were baptised. Written by the Italian Francesco Cangiamila, it had previously been published in Italian (Embriologia sacra, 1745) and French (Abrégé de l'embryologie sacrée, 1762), but only the Spanish version makes explicit mention of midwives in its title, alongside “priests, confessors, physicians and other persons”. Their role gains greater emphasis in the title of an adaptation published in New Spain in 1775: Avisos saludables a las parteras para el cumplimiento de su obligación. Sacados de la Embriología Sacra (Healthful counsel for midwives in the fulfilment of their obligations). The usefulness of this manual for female readers was then underlined in a new version published in New Spain that made pregnant women its target audience: Práctica piadosa e instructiva. En utilidad de las mugeres que se encuentran en cinta y de los niños que aún no han recibido el Santo Bautismo. Sacada de la Embriología Sagrada (Devout and instructive practice: for the use of women with child and for children who have not yet received holy baptism. Taken from the Sacred Embryology) (1806). The latter is a clear example of the way in which literature intended for women might be adapted to new contexts. The various versions of this work were also part of a process that began to unfold in the early eighteenth century: the monitoring and regulation of the professional activity of midwives. From 1750 onwards, midwives in Spain came under the jurisdiction of the Protomedicato, meaning they had to take an examination in order to practise, thus ensuring that their work was supervised by physicians and surgeons (Martínez Vidal and Pardo Tomás 2001). The arrival of this literature in New Spain can therefore be interpreted as, among other things, a reformist initiative on the part of the Spanish Monarchy to monitor these women more closely and to foster demographic growth by improving childbirth outcomes.

Religious treatises, devotional texts and other spiritual works that rolled off Spanish presses in the eighteenth century, whether in original Spanish-language versions or in translations from other languages, crossed the Atlantic in high numbers. One such publication was Discursos espirituales y morales, para el útil entretenimiento de las monjas y de las sagradas vírgenes que se retiran del siglo (Spiritual and moral discourses for the useful instruction of nuns and holy virgins living in retreat from the world); (Málaga, 1786). This Italian work by Cesare Calino (Discorsi scritturali e morali) was translated by Sister María Córdoba y Pacheco, and represents the kind of literature intended primarily for young women who wanted to enter religion. It was also advertised in the Gazeta de México in April 1795. Another example is La Religiosa ilustrada. Con instrucciones prácticas para renovar su espíritu en ocho días de exercicios (The enlightened nun. With practical instructions to renew the spirit in eight days of exercises) (Zaragoza, 1748), which was a translation of the Italian work La religiosa illuminata, by the Jesuit Pietro Ansalone and appeared in up to six editions in Spanish during the eighteenth century. One of the six was issued from the printing press of the widow of José Bernardo de Hogal in 1750 in Mexico City, another was printed in Lima in 1788. This work, together with other very similar texts aimed at the education of nuns during the eighteenth century,Footnote 5 both translations and Spanish originals, appears in many of the inventories of New Spanish convent and school libraries. This was the genre of women’s literature most commonly printed on the presses of New Spain, sometimes as new editions of works first published in peninsular Spain, sometimes as translations into Spanish directly sponsored by New Spanish clerics or nuns. The Avisos de Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis a varias religiosas, y reglas de perfección (Counsel of St Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi to various nuns, and rules of perfection), for instance, was a text translated from the Italian, published in Mexico in 1721 and advertised in the Gazeta in 1722. The success, or rather the practical value, of works of this type allows us to understand why they also enjoyed distribution around Spain, as in the case of La Virgen en el templo honrando el templo. Virtudes heroicas que exercitó María Santísima Señora Nuestra mientras vivió en el templo. Se las propone en meditaciones a las almas, en especial de vírgenes religiosas (The Virgin in the temple, honouring the temple. Heroic virtues exercised by Our Most Holy Lady Mary when she lived in the temple. These are offered as meditations for souls, especially those of virgin nuns). Written by José Tercero, a priest, and published in Mexico in 1723, it had a second edition printed in Seville in 1735. This makes it one of the few examples so far traced to have travelled from America to Europe, and clearly shows the importance of a cultural production that did not travel in just one direction or depend exclusively on the metropolis. The texts published both in Spain and, most notably, New Spain, also demonstrate the pedagogical aspect acquired by these manuals and treatises for nuns, conceived for non-specialist readers with a limited level of education.

Conclusions

Focusing on the circulation of literature for women from the perspective of the relationship between Spain and New Spain has allowed us to reflect both on the habitual circuits of the book trade and on the specific characteristics of home-grown Spanish-American production. As we have seen, printed works aimed at women in eighteenth-century Spain—whether by Spanish authors or, more commonly, translated from French, English or Italian—were more diverse in their subject matter than those produced in New Spain. It was these same works, in Spanish editions, that travelled to America and ended up in all kinds of libraries, whether private or institutional. By contrast, in the viceroyalty, literature for women was predominantly religious in nature, far more so than that printed in Spain, reflecting the greater influence wielded by the Church on New Spanish cultural and intellectual circles. Likewise, works were produced in much smaller quantities in America than they were in Europe, owing to the limitations of New Spain’s printing presses, among other factors.

All indications are that there was little diversity in the literature for women produced in New Spain until the turn of the nineteenth century, when significant changes begin to be discernible in the context of Mexican independence. Before then, the female readership targeted by writers seemed to consist primarily of Creole women who were members of religious orders. We should not, however, conclude that the imposing presence of the Church limited the possibilities of the New Spanish Enlightenment by preventing a process of secularisation already underway in Europe. The particularities of the literature for women produced in New Spain, religious in content and issued in smaller quantities than that coming from Europe, are a result of the cultural and intellectual characteristics of the viceroyalty itself, where the processes of change and modernisation took place within a strongly Catholic culture and not exclusively in opposition to it. This ties in with more recent studies that argue for the specificity of the Hispanic Enlightenment, which was not necessarily a secularising movement. If we look at religious literature for women, we can see the emergence of a growing interest in the need for education. On the one hand, this meant that works of this nature were especially useful for non-specialist audiences (women, but also children), on the other, it turned the religious sphere into one of the spaces offering New Spanish women (Creole, but also indigenous) the chance to educate themselves and others, via the translation and commissioning of printed material. That concern for education was also reflected in the teaching activities of religious orders, particularly attentive to improving the lives of girls from poor and/or indigenous backgrounds.

Finally, in order to better evaluate the Spanish-language literature published in Spain and New Spain, including those works aimed at female readers, we need to take into account the transatlantic book trade and the ways in which it influenced distribution circuits within Europe. The American and European publishing worlds were interrelated and fed into one another on a continuous basis (Rueda Ramírez 2010). Book distribution networks have therefore to be understood as connections controlled by agents on both sides of the Atlantic in which American readers were not simply passive recipients. European products travelled to America because there were printers, clerics and Creoles who motivated their circulation, allowing us to reinterpret European production by seeing American demand as a driving force behind it. In the case at hand, we can assume from the presence of literature for women in the libraries of convents and institutions established to educate girls that some nuns in the viceroyalty were actively involved in the circulation of this kind of material between the two continents. As a final thought, the emergence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of centres such as Philadelphia, one of whose specialities was the production of literature in Spanish for American readers, enables us to reflect on the global scope of literature written in that language, and on the ways in which it was able to travel through wide-ranging networks that extended beyond the territories of the Spanish Monarchy. Whether or not women were reading the literature intended for them is another question, and one more difficult to answer.