The library of an empire statesman: the inventory of the books belonging to José Lino Coutinho (1836)

Abstract This study presents an inventory of the books of the Brazilian statesman José Lino Coutinho (1786-1836), in which it was possible to identify most of his published collection, organized since the last decades of the colonial period. The set of his books, divided between works of political / philosophical nature and medical books reveals the reading habits of the intellectual elite in the transition from Portuguese colony to the Brazilian Empire. In Lino Coutinho library are present works and authors who provided the intellectual foundations, political and legal for the construction of the emerging Brazilian Imperial Order, of which he was one of the protagonists.