In this article, the authors study Diogo Barbosa Machado's great collection of pamphlets gathered during the eighteenth-century and housed at the Biblioteca Nacional, Brazil. At first, they highlight the importance of the written texts during the Modern Age and the circulation of printed documents as tools of power. Then they discuss the collection itself as an amalgamation of valuable pieces, as well as the way the Machado used collecting as a means to gain social prestige. The central point of the article is the discussion of systematic, or division into categories (taxonomy) that the Portuguese collector decided upon to organize the volumes as he assembled them, which is also related to the various times along with the collection was put together. In such a manner, the authors formulate the hypothesis of break in time in which Barbosa Machado lived.
National Library of Brazil; Barbosa Machado's collection; pamphlets; Portuguese Monarchy.