Porto, Feb. 20 2025 (Lusa) - Livraria Lello, Porto's most famous bookshop, known for its elaborate decor, has bought at auction and will now put on display the private library of Amy Winehouse, which it describes as offering “a window” into the identity of the late singer, who collected theatre, fiction and comics and left her red lipstick marks on several works.

Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the administrator of Livraria Lello, Aurora Pinto, explained that it had been impossible for the company to “resist the temptation” of acquiring the collection of an artist who “was much more than just a singer," in her words.

“Although it may seem unlikely that the bookshop would be interested in Amy Winehouse, it turns out to be inevitable because writing, whether it's books or lyrics, is writing and it's always stories, and stories always fit into Lello,” she said.

Amy Winehouse's library, which consists of 230 books, has a value that “goes far beyond the value of each book,” Pinto said, while adding that Lello has chosen not to reveal how much it paid for the collection.

The books, which are on display from Thursday in the bookshop's Gemma room - “an exclusive space dedicated to the most valuable literary jewels” - has been divided into four parts correspondeing to "four phases of Amy Winehouse's life," according to Pinto.

“The first part is 'Adolescent', which has the books she read as a young girl," Pinto explained. "What we find, essentially, are plays, such as Arthur Miller and his first play, 'Little Shop of Horrors', in which Amy shows her enjoyment of drama by writing in the book, in fat letters, 'I Love Drama'. This shows that at a very young age Amy had this side, this dramatic side."

The second part, she continued, is called 'Nerd'.

“These are essentially comic books or graphic novels," she stressed. "These are the books that occupy the largest share of the collection; it's something that accompanied her life and that she valued very much.”

In this section, there are works by the Hernández brothers and other authors known for their comics, in which “you can see an Amy who was looking for a taste for visual identity, a taste and passion for visual storytelling and that marked her musical career.”

Part three - dubbed 'The artists' - is made up of “books about other artists, especially biographies, with subjects such as Frank Sinatra, Madonna and Bob Marley, with whom and with whose work Amy had a strong connection - one that "she also reveals in her own creation,” Pinto noted.

Finally, the “fourth and last part” is dedicated to “more traditional” books and has been called 'Literature'. Here one can find, for example, the “complete works of [J.D] Salinger, all the books and some in more than one edition.

“We also know that she started reading Salinger when she was twelve, she read 'Catcher in the Rye' - a strong, heavy book about a young man with a life path that was similar to hers - he was expelled from school, then the problem of how to tell his parents," noted Pinto. "There are identities here that [Amy Winehouse] looks for in the works she reads, parallels with her own life."

The Lello administrator, who confessed to being a “big fan” of Amy Winehouse, added that the artist's love of books was also manifested in a very particular way: “Amy's passion for reading some of these books was such that she would kiss the pages with red lipstick.”

JCR/ARO // ARO.

Lusa