While Portugal's contributions to early modern book production are often overlooked, the Casa Literária do Arco do Cego printing-house (1799-1801) was a typographical venture officially sponsored by the Portuguese government that translated—and later published—agro-industrial texts and treatises that were distributed to governors, ministers, and economic agents throughout the greater Portuguese empire. Created by Brazilian-born naturalist Frei José Mariano da Conceição Veloso (1742-1811), the Arco do Cego project relied on his strategic use of foreign techniques and practices relating to translation and circulation, important techniques within the larger eighteenth-century book trade at a particularly sensitive moment in Portuguese economic history.

Neil Safier is Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, with a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of History at Brown University.

Co-sponsored by Houghton Library and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Date:
Thursday, May 9,  2019, 5:30 PM
Location:
Houghton Library, Edison and Newman Room.