Abstract
The José María Lafragua Library of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla lodges several valuable manuscript exemplars and antique books, edited since the invention of the press until the present day. Each book contains seals of different kinds between its pages and its covers: fire marks, printed ex libris, ex dono stamps and superbooks, all of which represented proprietary markings in antique books. The ex libris was a certificate which was glued onto the backside of the front cover, with the owner’s name or the name of the library to which the book belonged to; ex dono stamps consisted of a mark which specifically mentioned the donor, and the superbooks (the rarest in the Lafragua Library) were a propietary mark generally made in bronze with representative figures such as emblems, monograms, initials or acronyms. Among all these marks of bibliographic ownership, the author pays special emphasis to fire marks, which consisted in seals, initials, letters and signs pressed onto the book with red hot iron, and could be made up of drawings, legends or a name with which to identify the owner.