In the mid-1870s, Argentine writer Juana Manuela Gorriti organized a series of literary soirees in Lima. Participants included both women and men who delivered talks, recited poetry, and performed songs. Scholars consider these soirees exceptional because they gave Peruvian women writers such as Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Teresa González de Fanning, among others, the chance to position themselves as valid interlocutors to their male peers. The participants also advocated for women's access to higher education and professional occupations. In his book, Ronald Briggs argues that the Lima women's circuit tied gender emancipation to reading, writing, and publishing within political and intellectual contexts dominated by men. Aware of the ideas circulated by equivalent networks in the rest of the Americas and Europe, these South American authors embraced the premise that the printed word was a means to educate and reform society, especially in moral terms. To...

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