Spain’s Eighteenth-Century Periodical Press: Antonio Valladares de Sotomayor and the Semanario Erudito

The first study of the Semanario Erudito, an important late eighteenth-century Spanish periodical.

This book tells the story of one of the most important and long-lived of the erudite periodicals published in Spain in the eighteenth century, the Semanario Erudito and its editor, Antonio Valladares de Sotomayor (1737-1820). Founded in 1887, the Semanario ceased publication when private periodicals were prohibited in February 1791.

Through the Semanario Erudito Valladares sought to teach his readers Spanish history. Each week he published historical documents he believed would be instructive; most had never before been published. Spain’s Eighteenth-Century Periodical Press examines not only Valladares’s life and works and the history of the Semanario, including its printers, sellers, and readers, but it also discusses the history of printing laws and censorship and the documents Valladares published on topics such as the monarchy, economic reform, and Spain’s place on the world stage.

Madeline Sutherland-Meier is associate professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin.