definitely borghi (Small medieval village) In Lunigiana several centuries ago, some poor mountain people, driven by necessity, began to climb the difficult paths of the Apennines and then descend and spread across the northern plain to sell sacred images, ephemera, sharpened stones, trinkets, remnants of clothing and household utensils. And they also sold books that they often did not know how to read.
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When good weather arrived, after May folk songs, people met at Sisa Pass to agree on their selling areas. Then they went to the other side of the mountains to buy the goods in bulk, carrying them for sale in every corner of the plain. This huge traveling market can deliver to almost every doorstep. Even today, some towns in Lunigiana are remembered for their special wares. Information about what to sell and to whom was given to a restricted group of fellow residents and a few others. according to tradition, Rain Departed from Vespano, Groppo, Darbia and Pieve. They were called by this name because they extended as far as Brescia (or Barça, as that city was called in the local dialect). Booksellers moved from Paraná, Mulazo and Monteregio. He had the courage that came from general poverty, the will to work, and having no alternative.
Everyone who traveled was a bit strange, and capable of making imprudent choices. For him there was no limit that could not be crossed.
either the first traveling salesman Rain Or booksellers, loading their wares into wicker baskets that they carried on their backs. Then they started using hand carts, then horse-drawn carts, then motorized carts when roads became passable. down on the fields and barns stale (Lowland) Along the Po River, farmers who felt tied to field work like their oxen tied to the plow became fascinated by these strange people who had come from across the mountains and seemed free to choose their own destiny. Travelers had a way with words; They laughed; Their women would sometimes give orders to the men nearby. But words and smiles were for selling. When they returned home, these male and female travelers felt somewhat displaced, and for the entire winter they adopted the quiet expression of the mountain people, with few words to deal with disease and hunger like everyone else.
Before visiting Lunigiana, I knew nothing about this tradition. When I discovered it, the image of the traveling bookseller naturally caught my attention, as I too had started selling books in my own town right in the middle of the Northern Plains in my forties.
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The story of one of these itinerant book sellers is remarkable. The son of poor residents of Paraná, Emmanuel Mouchi began selling books along with many other unemployed youth, like his father and grandfather, who coincidentally were born in the same state. borghi Sprinkled in the foothills on the right side of the Magra valley. They had been following this tradition for generations. Booksellers were not the only traveling vendors of Lunigiana, but they were the most admired. With the air of people coming from far and wide, he pretended to read the books he had kept open and narrated the stories he heard during his travels so as to awaken the imagination of the people living there. staleWho didn’t seem to have anything. Then imagination unleashes the spark of desire that makes it possible to imagine change and thus make it possible.
In the years of the French Revolution and during the Italian Risorgimento, traveling people carried in their baskets – hidden under books – various leaflets and manifestos of secret societies plotting against the Ancien Régime. Already, his work was looked down upon by traditionalists. They were foreigners, and their books revealed what desires poor people had, the better to keep them ignorant so that they could act without much thought. If, in addition to tales of knights and fair ladies, itinerant vendors also carried publications related to politics, then in the eyes of the police these vendors would become a vector for spreading the plague of the written word.
Booksellers performed the same function that publishers’ representatives and book reviewers do today. And because by this time they knew the market well, they opened the first bookshops in the North, just as other itinerant Lunigiani salespeople opened shops offering clothing, textiles and shoes. people living in stale They were right: all the people who traveled were a little strange, capable of making unwise choices. For him there was no limit that could not be crossed. Being anti-conformist by nature, he generated a kind of fear. Meanwhile, he sold books and spread culture.
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One day, Emmanuel Mouchi decided to change direction in his life. He had the idea of selling books in South America. From acquaintances who had already immigrated, he had heard that there were many Italians there. So he also left with a basket of books.
Things did not go well for him in the beginning. They tried Buenos Aires, then decided to go to Mexico City. Perhaps he was told that people there read more. Mauchi must have been of a strict nature; He did not give up. Gradually, he started selling and his sales area expanded. He also established a small publishing house, which survived and grew to such an extent that he decided to go back and print and sell books closer to home. Not in Lunigiana, where no one studies; Instead, he chose Barcelona in Spain and founded a publishing house there in 1892. Mouchi now knew how to read and write, but only in Spanish. When he returned to Paraná during the summer, he spoke only the local dialect, a mixture of Sicilian, Emilian and Ligurian.
Who knows whether Mauchi ever nurtured some sympathy for the godless Jacobins (as the French radical revolutionaries were then generally known), cursed from the church pulpit as if they were the devil? In any case, for him freedom was not just an idea; This meant that he could move from one place to another without police permission or passing through customs, and he could sell the books people wanted to buy without any censorship. Flags had no significance, nor did political projects designed for a tomorrow that was always far away. Whatever being independent may or may not mean, he had learned to earn his living.
Yet, in his own way, Mouchi loved books. Once he started reading, he realized that he could read a good book: it took him just a few pages to understand what the book was about and who it would please. And then—after handling so many books, turning their pages, feeling the quality of their paper and covers—he came up with a brilliant idea. Jacket pockets and purses can hold small books that can be read at any time of the day. Their size and weight can be made attractive and manageable. They will cost less and be less intimidating.
The booksellers of Lunigiana found a new means of celebrating their tradition, which went against the “every man for himself” attitude that the miserable school of life had taught them.
The key innovation of pocket books became Casa Editorial Mouchi’s big selling point, which saw its products spread like wildfire and sell at an unimaginable rate. From Barcelona, the company opened a subsidiary in Madrid, sending books to Buenos Aires and Mexico City, where partners and relatives distributed and sold them. Attentive to technological advances, Mouchi was among the first to realize that Linotype equipment would save time and money, so he purchased it. The culture industry was being born – full of possibilities, good and bad – and Emmanuel Mouchi had not trained for it. Yet the mental horizons of Mouchi and his associates were broader and more dynamic than those of the big shots, small-time lawyers and clerics who remained in their old Lunigiana.
I don’t know what happened to Casa Editorial Mauchi, which began to fail during the Spanish Civil War. Today no one talks about it. As far as I know, the original traveling booksellers from Paraná, Monteregio and Pontremoli, who also opened major bookshops in various northern Italian cities, did not open any shops in Lunigiana. Their instincts as uneducated former farmers advised them against doing so. They kept in their baskets the printed books which they themselves had learned to read while handling them, and they urged their poor customers to take them without any fear. These included popular editions of the almanac, the three MusketeersCarolina Invernizio’s serial novels (full of sensationalism and melodrama), and other titles that have rarely achieved literary fame. Emmanuel Mouchi would never have thought of starting an editorial enterprise publishing books that would be read only by the literate elite.
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The booksellers of Lunigiana found a new means of celebrating their tradition, which went against the “every man for himself” attitude that the miserable school of life had taught them.
Some sellers, now living in northern cities and proud of the well-displayed books on well-lit shelves inside their new stores, decided to erect a monument to themselves, because no one else would think of doing so. At Pontremoli, to which they departed every spring for many years, they sought to leave a monument to their work as pioneers of the trade-book industry. He created a new type of literary award, the Bankerella (“Bookstand” award), the name of which distinguished it from the many other awards already in existence. The jury of this award will exclusively consist of book sellers, and the books to be awarded will be selected from among the bestsellers. The awards will be based on simple, transparent criteria that require publishers to be polite and remind authors, publishers and readers that a book’s destiny depends on it being placed far from the home of the elite, right in front of readers’ eyes.
The fresh wind of pragmatism that enlivened the Bankerella Awards – a book fair that highlighted and celebrated the consumerist dimension of the book as commodity – pushed the boundaries of the publishing industry beyond its traditional readership. The award originated from the concept of the book, which was developed by the nomadic booksellers of Lunigiana, who also traveled the written word, climbing the Sisa Pass with their baskets of books.
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From Patient Waiting of Stones: Time and Memory in Lunigiana By Antonio Romani, translated by Antonio Romani and Martha Cooley. Copyright © 2026. Available from Galpon Press.
