Te circulation of news emerged in Europe in the mid-1400s as a way of satisfying people’s curiosity and interest in events that had begun to become well known. Reports about travel, battles, miracles, discoveries, and natural and supernatural phenomena transitioned from the oral medium to manuscripts, while afer the invention of the movable type press printed supports with added engravings became possible. Africa, Asia and Americas were incorporated. During the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries the circulation of news became more intense, leading to the appearance of the first periodical publications called Mercuries and Gazettes. Nonetheless, manuscript news kept on circulating. Everywhere collectors of reports, notifications, and news created collections of miscellanea that deserve to be examined. Under-standing this process allows reflection on new modalities of writing: briefer, more agile, and ephemeral, which were capable of providing information from afar, following the dynamics of travel and the circula-tion of people around the world. Te new techniques for printing texts and images and the agility for distributing them are part of this move-ment, which, during Early Modern times, acquired further political and economic dimensions.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0104-87752019000200007