Abstract
Based on the studies of the history of books and written culture, the article considers typography as one of the indicators of the circulation of written culture in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. We take yearbooks, almanacs, and advertisements as sources to recover some technical conditions of typographies and their role in the relation to other instances, such as bookstores and stationery stores. From the advertisements, we inventory the offer of printing and map some areas of use and writing genres. We have discovered that the majority of the offers are used in financial and commercial life, followed by the uses connected to everyday life, information, advertising, religious, civil and legal spheres, school, and literature. We conclude that printed and manuscript cultures are blended in the genres and that typography can reflect the social practices of writing while establishing and inventing them.
Keywords:
written culture; typography; printed culture; manuscript culture