In definite borghi (small medieval villages) successful Lunigiana respective centuries ago, immoderate impoverished upland people, pushed by necessity, began climbing the arduous paths of the Apennines and past descending and dispersing crossed the bluish plain to merchantability ineffable images, almanacs, sharpening stones, trinkets, remnants of fabric, and household utensils. And they sold books arsenic well, which they often didn’t cognize however to read.
When bully upwind arrived, aft the people songs of May, radical met up connected the Cisa Pass to hold connected their selling zones. Then they went down the different broadside of the mountains to bargain successful bulk the merchandise they would transportation for merchantability to each country of the plain. This immense itinerant marketplace could marque deliveries to astir each door. Even today, definite towns successful Lunigiana are remembered for their peculiar merchandise. Information astir what to sell, and to whom, was passed down wrong a restricted radical of chap residents and a fewer others. By tradition, the barsan departed from Vespeno, Groppo, Darbia, and Pieve. They were called by that sanction due to the fact that they dispersed arsenic acold arsenic Brescia (or Barsa, arsenic that metropolis was called successful the section dialect). The booksellers departed from Parana, Mulazzo, and Montereggio. They had successful communal poverty, the volition to work, and a courageousness that came from having nary alternatives.
The itinerants were each a spot peculiar, susceptible of making imprudent choices. For them, determination were nary borders that couldn’t beryllium crossed.
The archetypal itinerant sellers, either barsan oregon booksellers, would load their merchandise into wicker baskets they carried connected their backs. Then they began utilizing manus carts, past carts pulled by horses, past motorized carts erstwhile the roads became drivable. On farmsteads down successful the bassa (lowlands) on the Po River, the peasants who felt tied to fieldwork similar their oxen yoked to their plows were fascinated by these peculiar people who came from implicit the mountains and seemed escaped to take their ain destinies. The itinerants had a mode with words; they laughed; their women sometimes ordered the men around. But words and smiles were for selling. When they returned home, these antheral and pistillate itinerants felt somewhat dislocated, and for the full wintertime they wore the taciturn expressions of upland people of fewer words, dealing with sickness and hunger similar everyone else.
Before moving to Lunigiana, I knew thing of this tradition. When I discovered it, people the fig of the itinerant bookseller attracted my attention, for I excessively successful my forties had begun selling books successful my municipality close successful the mediate of the bluish plain.
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The communicative of 1 of these itinerant booksellers is remarkable. The lad of mediocre residents of Parana, Emanuele Maucci began selling books conscionable arsenic his begetter and gramps had done, on with truthful galore different unemployed young radical who had happened to beryllium calved successful 1 of the borghi sprinkled successful the foothills connected the right-hand broadside of the Magra Valley. For generations, they had passed down this tradition. The booksellers were not the lone itinerant sellers of Lunigiana, but they were the astir admired. With the aerial of radical who came from acold away, they pretended to work the books they held unfastened and told stories heard during their travels to awaken the imaginations of radical surviving successful the bassa, who seemed not to person any. Imagination past unlocked the spark of tendency that allowed alteration itself to beryllium imaginable and frankincense made it possible.
In the years of the French Revolution and during the Italian Risorgimento, the itinerants carried successful their baskets—hidden beneath the books—various leaflets and manifestos of concealed societies conspiring against the ancien régime. Already, their enactment was looked down connected by traditionalists. They were foreigners, and their books ignited who knew what desires successful mediocre people, who were champion kept ignorant truthful they would enactment without reasoning excessively much. If, successful summation to tales of knights and just ladies, the itinerant sellers carried astir publications dealing with politics, past successful the eyes of the constabulary these sellers would go a vector for spreading the plague of the written word.
The booksellers did the enactment that publishers’ representatives and publication reviewers bash today. And due to the fact that by this clip they knew the marketplace well, they opened the archetypal bookstores successful the north, conscionable arsenic different itinerant Lunigianese salespeople opened stores offering fabric, clothes, and shoes. People surviving successful the bassa were right: The itinerants were each a spot peculiar, susceptible of making imprudent choices. For them, determination were nary borders that couldn’t beryllium crossed. By quality anti-conformist, they aroused a benignant of awe. Meanwhile, they sold books and dispersed culture.
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One day, Emanuele Maucci decided to displacement absorption successful his life. He had successful caput the thought of selling books successful South America. From acquaintances who’d already emigrated, he’d heard that tons of Italians were there. So helium excessively went, with a handbasket of books.
Initially, things didn’t spell good for him. He tried Buenos Aires, past decided to determination to Mexico City. Perhaps helium had been told that radical work much there. Maucci must’ve been a pugnacious type; helium didn’t springiness up. Bit by bit, helium began selling, and his income portion widened. He adjacent founded a tiny publishing house, which survived and grew, to the grade that helium decided to spell backmost and people and merchantability books person to home. Not successful Lunigiana, wherever nary 1 read; instead, helium chose Barcelona successful Spain, founding a publishing location determination successful 1892. Maucci present knew however to work and write, but lone successful Spanish. When helium returned to Parana during summertime, helium spoke lone dialect, a premix of section Tuscan, Emilian, and Ligurian.
Who knows if Maucci ever nurtured definite sympathies for godless Jacobins (as French extremist revolutionaries were past mostly known), cursed from religion pulpits arsenic though they were devils? In immoderate case, for him state wasn’t conscionable an idea; it meant helium could determination from 1 spot to different without support from the constabulary oregon having to walk done customs, and helium could merchantability uncensored the books radical wanted to buy. Flags didn’t matter, nor did governmental projects designed for immoderate time that was ever excessively acold off. Whatever being escaped meant oregon didn’t mean, he’d learned by having to gain his regular bread.
Yet successful his ain way, Maucci loved books. Once helium started reading, helium realized helium could sniff retired a bully one: All it took was a fewer pages for him to consciousness what the publication was astir and if and whom it would please. And then—having handled truthful galore books, flipped done their pages, felt the prime of their insubstantial and covers—he came up with a superb idea. Small books mightiness beryllium kept successful overgarment pockets and purses to beryllium work astatine immoderate infinitesimal during the day. Their signifier and value could beryllium made charismatic and manageable. They would outgo little and beryllium little intimidating.
The booksellers of Lunigiana recovered a caller means of celebrating their tradition, which went against the cognition of “every antheral for himself” that the pitiless schoolhouse of beingness had taught them.
The large innovation of pouch books became the large selling constituent of Casa Editorial Maucci, which saw its products merchantability astatine an inconceivable rate, spreading similar wildfire. From Barcelona, the institution opened an affiliate successful Madrid, sending books to Buenos Aires and Mexico City wherever partners and relatives distributed and sold them. Attentive to technological progress, Maucci was among the archetypal to intuit that linotype instrumentality would prevention clip and money, truthful helium purchased it. The civilization manufacture was being born—full of possibilities, bully and bad—and Emanuele Maucci hadn’t trained for it. Yet the intelligence horizons of Maucci and his associates were wider and much mobile than those of the large shots, small-time lawyers, and clerics who’d remained to vegetate successful their aged Lunigiana.
I don’t cognize what happened to Casa Editorial Maucci, which began failing during the Spanish Civil War. Today nary 1 talks astir it anymore. As acold arsenic I’m aware, the archetypal itinerant booksellers from Parana, Montereggio, and Pontremoli who besides opened large bookstores successful assorted bluish Italian cities didn’t unfastened immoderate successful Lunigiana. Their instincts arsenic illiterate ex-peasants counseled them against doing so. They carried successful their baskets those printed books they themselves learned however to work portion handling them, and they urged their mediocre customers to prime them up without fear. These included almanacs, fashionable versions of The Three Musketeers, serialized novels by Carolina Invernizio (full of sensationalism and melodrama), and different titles that seldom achieved literate fame. Emanuele Maucci would ne'er person thought of launching an editorial task publishing books that lone the literate elite would read.
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The booksellers of Lunigiana recovered a caller means of celebrating their tradition, which went against the cognition of “every antheral for himself” that the pitiless schoolhouse of beingness had taught them.
Some of the sellers, by present surviving successful bluish cities and arrogant of their well-displayed books connected nicely lit shelves wrong their caller stores, decided to marque a monument to and for themselves, since nary 1 other would deliberation of doing so. In Pontremoli, from which for truthful galore years they’d departed each spring, they sought to permission a memorial to their enactment arsenic pioneers of the trade-book industry. They created a caller benignant of literate prize, the Bancarella (the “Bookstand” Prize), whose sanction itself established its quality from galore different awards already successful existence. The juries of this prize would beryllium composed exclusively of booksellers, and the books to beryllium awarded would beryllium chosen from among the bestsellers. The awards would beryllium based connected simple, transparent criteria, which required publishers to beryllium humble and reminded authors, publishers, and readers however overmuch the destiny of a publication depended connected its being enactment close successful beforehand of readers’ eyes, distant from the tabernacles of the elite.
The caller upwind of pragmatism animating the Bancarella Prize—a publication just that exposed and celebrated the consumerist magnitude of the publication arsenic object—pushed the boundaries of the publishing manufacture beyond the niches of its accepted readership. The prize originated successful a conception of the publication that was developed by itinerant booksellers of Lunigiana who, climbing implicit the Cisa Pass with their baskets of books, made the written connection question arsenic well.
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From The Patient Wait of the Stones: Time and Memory successful Lunigiana by Antonio Romani, translated by Antonio Romani and Martha Cooley. Copyright © 2026. Available from Galpón Press.
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