Pablos, Juan

Pablos, Juan (hwän pä`blōs), d. 1561?, printer in Spanish America. Pablos printed in Mexico City the first book known to have been printed in the Western Hemisphere. It was a religious manual, Breve y más compendiosa doctrina christiana en lengua mexicana y castellana [a brief and greatly abridged Christian doctrine in the Mexican and Castilian languages]. It appeared in 1539, a full century before the appearance of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed within the present boundaries of the United States. Pablos was an Italian, a native of Brescia in Lombardy, and went to Mexico in 1539 as the agent of Juan Cromberger, a printer of Seville. He continued to print books with the Cromberger mark after Cromberger's death (1540), but in 1548 he began to print in his own name and continued to do so until 1560. See also Martín, Esteban.