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Printed books largely spread throughout Hispanic America, and in Peru in particular, in the nineteenth century. Books reached a wider scale just when a genuine national literature was emerging. Peruvian high magistrates were at the center of this silent revolution because they were not only judges but fulfilled political, social, or cultural duties too. As politicians at the head of ministries, assemblies, and parliaments, they wrote legislative and administrative texts. As lawyers, jurists, and jurisconsults, they set up new Peruvian law, writing the first codes and constitutions among others. They used books or notes taken by their students to pass on their knowledge to the youngest in their law firms or at university. In short, written work was central to their life. Some even ventured in fields that were, at first sight, not their duty or office, such as literature, linguistics, or translation. Being major actors in the budding Peruvian state and nation, high magistrates thus appear as great producers of written works, a large part of which has been kept. Studying their book collections enables us to grasp the link they established with printed work. Three of these, corresponding to different generations of magistrates, are especially rich and noteworthy. They shall be analyzed in detail in the present work. The first one, belonging to the Peruvian Supreme Court first president, Manuel Lorenzo Vidaurre (1773–1841), looks like a book collection of the Enlightenment in many ways: it gathers together books dealing with various subjects and contents, suggesting real desire for encyclopedic knowledge. The two others belong to the next generation of magistrates: Toribio Pacheco (1828–1868) and Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan (1821–1886), republicans born after the independence of Peru who tried to lead their country up the rank of great nations. Many more law books can be found there, as well as lots of others on Peruvian history and geography. These three collections hint at their owners’ intellectual wealth, their connections with European culture, and the discovery of national identity. Far from being mere decorative objects, the owning of books sheds light on a period of time in Peruvian history–the first republican decade–that has been scarcely studied.